Understanding the WMI object path format

Question

I want to write a class with similar funcionality as the .NET ManagementPath class. On MSDN is a set of articles which handles the format of object paths. However, I don't understand it yet with all special cases

• String comparisons that deal with object paths are always case-insensitive. ==> does this also apply to the values of keys when querying for object instances?

• Hexadecimal constants for integers. ==> where can they occur? in values of keys only?

• Boolean constants for classes with keys that take Boolean values. ==> what are the constants? true / false? 0 / 1?

• An assumed local server with a partial namespace path. Thus, specifying the root and default namespace implies the root and default namespace on the local server. ==> does this only mean that if I don't specify a server, that then "." is used as server?

• No white space either within an element or between elements. ==> why does the original .NET implementation allow spaces in server names then?

• Embedded quotation marks in object paths are allowed but must delimit the quotation mark with escape characters, as in a C or C++ application. ==> ???

• Only decimal values are recognized as numeric portions of keys. ==> ???

• Everything on this page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa389223(v=VS.85).aspx ==> ?

Well, the basic paths that I think are valid look like

\\Server\Namespace
        \Namespace
\\Server\Namespace:Class
        \Namespace:Class
                   Class
\\Server\Namespace:Class.KeyName=KeyValue
        \Namespace:Class.KeyName=KeyValue
                   Class.KeyName=KeyValue
\\Server\Namespace:Class=KeyValue
        \Namespace:Class=KeyValue
                   Class=KeyValue
\\Server\Namespace:Class.FirstKey=FirstValue,SecondKey=SecondValue
        \Namespace:Class.FirstKey=FirstValue,SecondKey=SecondValue
                   Class.FirstKey=FirstValue,SecondKey=SecondValue
\\Server\Namespace:Class=@
        \Namespace:Class=@
                   Class=@
as well as all combinations were the \\ is replaced by a // and/or the 
\ between server and namespace is replaced by /

Have I forgotten anything here?

This is what can be extracted from MSDN. However, how may the individual tokens look like? This is what I think it may be:

KeyValue = "string"      <-- string
           1             <-- numeric
           0x1           <-- hex
           ??????????    <-- about the "decimal value" thing and 
                             "embedded quitation mark" thing. 
                             Also, what about whitespaces? 
                             do they have to be abreviated by %20?

KeyName / Class / Server
         = string without : or / or \ inside and maybe only [a-z0-9_] ? 

Namespace 
         = string without : or / inside and maybe only [a-z0-9_\]
        (.NET implementation also buggy here. accepts forward slashes regardless of 
          "You cannot use forward slashes within namespace names." on MSDN)
            Also, are they allowed to start with \ and end with a : ?

It would be very helpful if for each token a regular expression could be given of how it looks like.

Answer 1

Probably you can get useful information seeing the source code of the class.

If you want to test a string to be a match or not of a regex, you can use a tester.

good luck.