Metacharacters

Certain characters have special meaning to the directory service; these are known as metacharacters. The following table lists and explains the CDS, GDS, and DNS metacharacters.

Metacharacters and Their Meaning

Directory
Service
Character
Meaning

CDS /

\

Separates elements of a name (simple names).
Used where necessary in front of a \e (backslash) to escape the character; indicates that the following character is not a metacharacter.

GDS /

,

=

\ Separates Relative Distinguished Names (RDNs).
Separates multiple attribute type/value pairs (attribute value assertions) within an RDN.
Separates an attribute type and value in an attribute value assertion.
Used in front of a / (slash), a , (comma), or an = (equal sign) to escape the character; indicates that the following character is not a metacharacter.

DNS . Separates elements of a name.

Some metacharacters are not permitted as normal characters within a name. For example, a \ (backslash) cannot be used as anything but an escape character in GDS. You can use other metacharacters as normal characters in a name, provided that you escape them with the backslash metacharacter.