Proposal [B] for Re: INN config file parsing infrastructure

Todd Olson tco2 at cornell.edu
Fri May 5 16:21:42 UTC 2000


Hi Russ

So I recently sent notes questioning the proposed line continuation spec
for handling inn config files.  Here is an alternate alternate proposal.
This is offered for completeness.  I suspect this is distasteful
and we don't want to go here.
Basically it the proposal is be mostly perl-like requiring ';'
and ignoring <newline>.

  1) There are statements and blocks-structures
  2) *All* statements require a terminating token ... say  ';'
  3) block structures look like   "token token ... { ... }"
     they don't require terminating ';'
  4) <newline>s are *not* significant ... they are just other whitespace.
  5) in "parameter: value" statements the value *can* have embedded
     white space (including <newline>s) without being quoted.  In this
     case the white space is insignificant except as a token separator.
  6) values can be in quotes, in which case white space is taken literally
     *except* for  "<newline><whitespaces>" which are elided.
  7) To put a newline into a quoted value use a '\n'

This would permit readability just as proposal [A] did ... just different.

EXAMPLES:

#1] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=
     parameter:  host1 at very.long.domain.name1,host2 at very.long.domain.name2,host3 at very.long.domain.name3;

     parameter: 
         host1 at very.long.domain.name1
         host2 at very.long.domain.name2
         host3 at very.long.domain.name3
     ;

   These mean the same thing.

   The first is hard to read.
   The second  *much* more readable.

#2] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=
     wildmat: @to.*, at contro*, at clari.*, at uo.*,@*warez*,@*cd.image*,@*mp3*
             ,@*bootleg*,@*crack*,@*hack*,@*2600*,@*phreak*,@*password*
             ,@*job*,@*test*,@*mlm*
             ,@*multilevel*,@*nospam*,@*anon*, at mail*, at private.*,@*lists.*
             ,@*bonehead*;

#3] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=

      parameter:  "x-comment:  A long line.... ...... ......... .... .....formated gracefully";

      parameter:  "x-comment:  A long line.... ...... .....
                                   .... .... .....formated gracefully";

   Both set the paramater to 
"x-comment:  A long line.... ...... ......... .... .....formated gracefully"

   but the second definately leads to a cleaner config file.
   Especially with the grouping structure and the tendency for people
   to use indentation with the grouping.

#4] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=
     parameter:  "x-comment:  Three lines\n	with leading\n	tabs";

     parameter:  "x-comment:  Three lines
                \n	with leading
                \n	tabs
                 ";

  This shows how to encode leading white space gracefully

#5] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=
     parameter:  "x-comment:  Three lines
                              with leading
                              tabs";

     parameter:  "x-comment:  Three lineswith leadingtabs";

   This is the most confusion I see with this proposal.

#6] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=
   Russ said

>Syntax error.  Actually, if you write:
>
>    parameter1:
>    parameter2:
>
>you'll actually set parameter1 to the value "parameter2:", so inncheck
>should check for this.  (Or we could require that the value start on the
>same line as the parameter, but I'm not sure that's necessary.)

To be correct in proposal [B] this would have to be
     parameter1: ;
     parameter2: ;

#7] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=
Finally the example Russ gives work pretty nice in this scheme also

    group blah { parameter: value; parameter2: value2 }

    group
    blah
    { parameter:
    value;
    parameter2: value2;
    }


Regards,
Todd Olson
Cornell Unversity















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