Questions about route-map behavior

Hello,

I have a border router running a Debian 12 installation with FRRouting. I was advised to try VyOS, so I decided to test it, but I immediately ran into issue.

When the prefix-list is missing, I cannot add a route-map rule with match ip address prefix-list.

I run:

vyos@BORDER1# set policy route-map TEST rule 5 action 'permit'
vyos@BORDER1# set policy route-map TEST rule 5 match ip address prefix-list 'PL-TEST'

Then commit fails with:

vyos@BORDER1# commit
[ policy ]
prefix-list PL-TEST does not exist!
[[policy]] failed
Commit failed

However, if I do the same thing through vtysh, the route-map is created successfully:

vyos@BORDER1:~$ vtysh
BORDER1# conf
BORDER1(config)# route-map TEST permit 5
BORDER1(config-route-map)# match ip address prefix-list 'PL-TEST'
BORDER1(config-route-map)#

At the same time, this works without any issue:

vyos@BORDER1# set policy route-map TEST rule 5 action 'permit'
vyos@BORDER1# set policy route-map TEST rule 5 match as-path 'AS-TEST'
vyos@BORDER1# commit
[edit]
vyos@BORDER1#

So my question is: why can a route-map reference a non-existent as-path-list, but not a non-existent prefix-list?

Version: VyOS 2026.02
Build commit ID: e4c4eddad9b984

I guess that would count as a bug.