33.8.1 and nameless cookies

[Daikun]

The latest version of PM (33.8.1) is out now and I noticed this in the implementation notes:

From this version forward we no longer accept nameless cookies. If a cookie has no name and starts with an equal sign, it is outright rejected. If a cookie consists only of a string with no equal sign, it is interpreted as a valueless cookie with the name set to the string. This departs from our inherited Mozilla behavior where this was previously treated as a nameless cookie with the string as the value.
RFC 6265 forbids cookies without an equal sign (§5.2 step 2), but browsers accept them anyway for web compatibility reasons (poor web design). Moreover, §5.2 step 5 explicitly forbids nameless cookies.

Did any nameless cookies from the previous version of the browser carry over to this new version? Will we have to clear our cookies, or are they gone now?

[Moonchild]

Did any nameless cookies from the previous version of the browser carry over to this new version? Will we have to clear our cookies, or are they gone now?

They carried over; they are no longer accepted going forward but no cookie removal has been performed. You don't have to clear your cookies, although it may be something to consider if you're overly cautious about any previously-accepted nameless cookies potentially causing an issue in the future (extremely unlikely, but it could be a bit of defense-in-depth you can do of your own).

[jb_wisemo]

The obvious follow up question is if the new Pale Moon interpretation of equal-less cookies as valueless cookies instead of nameless cookies would be applied to inherited cookies, thus providing a consistent behavior seen from the web sites .

Also, in parallel with HTML attribute behaviors, should valueless cookies be processed as if they had their name as value. E.g. If the cookie set was "hello", should it be interpreted as "hello=hello" but sent back to servers as just "hello" ?

[Moonchild]

The obvious follow up question is if the new Pale Moon interpretation of equal-less cookies as valueless cookies instead of nameless cookies would be applied to inherited cookies, thus providing a consistent behavior seen from the web sites .

No. As I said, no migration is done. stored cookies aren't suddenly transformed. If your cookie storage currently has nameless cookies they will remain nameless unless you clear them and the site tries to set them again.

Also, in parallel with HTML attribute behaviors, should valueless cookies be processed as if they had their name as value.

How cookies are processed by the website is up to the website. We have no control over them.