pauldorman
Always return vectors of attributes [consistency]
I changed the function extract-attribute to always return a vector of values. Before this change, the function would check for the special case of exactly 1 value, in which case it would just return the value itself. This cause inconsistency in attributes that are normally arrays (e.g. a person's direct reports) but can sometimes have only a single member (e.g. a person with only one employee).
@the80srobot: The majority of LDAP attributes are single-valued in the server schema. If we were to wrap everything in a vector, it would make the common case unwieldy. It's not ideal when a multi-valued attribute (in the schema) with a single value (in the db) for an attribute such as uniqueMember is returned as a String and then needs to be updated as a vector. The cn attribute is a counter example: It allows multiple values but most often contains just one, making the String value, as opposed to a vector of String, easier to work with. The LDAP SDKs don't take a side in the matter, simply letting the caller invoke getAttrValue or getAttrValues.
If we were to head down this path that you suggest, I would think we should look at the schema to determine when to return a vector of values. And to implement it, we would give the caller an option on search/get requests to request strict-schema: multi-valued attributes (defined in schema) are returned in vectors, integer syntax attributes (defined in schema) are converted to Number, etc.
