[Bbradley62]

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I suspect South meant "pass" as "no strong opinion here... what do you think, pard?", but North took it as "let's defend here." Ick.
At another table, NS got to play doubled:

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[Antrax]

I like the description of 2♣: 4+D, 3-card D.

[barmar]

Yes, GIB thinks South's pass is for penalty. The description is:

No suitable call -- 5+ D; 17-21 HCP; 3-card D; rebiddable S; 22- total points

As for the combination of 5+D and 3-card D, that's because in the bidding rules, suit lengths can either be specified explicitly (4+, 5+), or they can be implied by the suit quality categories (3-card, biddable, etc.). When forming the complete description, longer length requirements will override shorter ones, and higher quality requirements will override lower ones, but the two different features don't override each other. It's similar to the relationship between HCP and total points, and why you could see a description where the HCP is higher than the total points, even though it's not possible.

[Antrax]

Interesting. Wouldn't it make more sense to have a sort of template for all the information bids can supply, gradually fill it from low quality to high quality descriptions and finally output what's non-null?

[barmar]

That's basically what it does. The template has a place for suit length, and another place for suit quality. And although quality is dependent on length, the two slots are updated independently. Some bids show length, some show quality. Going through all the rules and updating them to show both would be an enormous task.

I've suggested that the code should keep them consistent. When a bid shows one of these features, we should automatically update the other to the minimum corresponding value. So if a bid shows 5+ cards, we should raise the quality to biddable.