unified conf syntax proposal..

[Aidan Cully]

On Sun, Mar 11, 2001 at 11:26:00AM, Kai Henningsen said:
> 
> rra at stanford.edu (Russ Allbery)  wrote on 10.03.01 in <ylwv9w7sbi.fsf at windlord.stanford.edu>:
> 
> > Fabien Tassin <fta at sofaraway.org> writes:
> >
> > > I've planned to implement a parser for the following syntax RSN.
> 
> > The idea of defaults can be handled with nested groups that inherit all
> > properties from their enclosing groups unless they're explicitly
> > overridden; it's then easier to tell at a glance what properties apply.
> > I think a descriptive approach to feeds would be much clearer, like:
> 
> One additional possibility would be named parameter sets that can be added  
> elsewhere by name. Sometimes, your properties do not obey a strictly  
> hierarchical structure.
> 
> For example,
> 
> define "netfeed" {
>         accept "net.*";
> }
> 
> ...
> 
> ... {
>         ...
>         use "netfeed";
>         ...
> }
> 
> (change keywords to taste).

I'm of the opinion that things like this can be well accomplished by
running a pre-processor on a configuration file.in.  Where it's important
not to use a pre-processor is when we want syntactical rules that cannot
easily be imposed by such a tool.  (include files sometimes fall into
this category.)

'Course, there's nothing I like more then auto-generating files.  I'm
sure my opinions on things like this are suspect...

--aidan
-- 
Aidan Cully       "I saw Judas carryin' the body/ Of John Wilkes Booth..
Not Panix Staff    Down there by the train..."
aidan at panix.com         -Johnny Cash