Why a "> Three Character" FrontName Limit?

[alanstorm]

What's the reasoning behind forcing router front names to have three or more characters?

Invalid XML in file /path/to/magento2/app/code/Pulsestorm/HelloPestle/etc/frontend/routes.xml:
Element 'route', attribute 'id': [facet 'pattern'] The value 
'hello-world' is not accepted by the pattern '[A-Za-z0-9_]{3,}'.

[akent99]

I need to dig around for this one. I recall there was a reason, but it has slipped my mind right now. Is there a problem caused by this or were you just curious?

[alanstorm]

Both?  I wanted a URL that looked something like this

    http://example.magento.com/me/foo/baz

However, with the current restrictions in place, I can't create that sort of URL without going the custom router object route, which seems like a lot of extra work/potential system instability for a simple URL endpoint.  So this is really something I need.

However, I'm also curious as to the reasoning behind it.  Because it SEEMS like one of those obvious minor-but-important details that's missed in the rush to getting a 1.0 (err, 2.0) out the door, but I wasn't in the room when those decisions were made, so I'm curious if there's an actual solid reason for doing this.

[akent99 · Accepted solution]

Sorry, trying go catch up with old requests. I have not found any solid reason - I think its a bug. It is possible an internal "style rule" got translated into "prohibit it from happening", which is an unnecessary restriction in practice. If it has not been fixed already feel free to raise in GitHub as an issue (so you get updates when fixed). I do recall a discussion a while back on this or a similar issue and no real reason was raised.