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Re: Who is the procmail maintainer? (revisited 2005)

2005-11-05 23:09:49
At 20:26 2005-11-05 -0700, Google Kreme wrote:
Easily dealt with by having the PCRE state revert with each
includerc.  Push the state on the stack, reset it to OFF, pop it
off when the include completes.

No, this is NOT the way to do it.  if it's turned on, it's turned
on.  if you screw up and turn it on before loading a old style rc
file, well, that's your mistake.

Look at it from a different perspective: if an RC contains code that is 
intended to use the newer style regexp, why SHOULDN'T it just have a 
PCRE=ON setting at the top?  Then it would work when included by other 
rcfiles without having to rely upon some prior file having set up the 
universe correctly for support of the syntax.  In this fashion, having a 
PCRE flag which acts in a FIFO stack fashion WRT includerc would make 
perfect sense.  includercs which don't explicitly set the PCRE flag would 
be presumed to be using older syntax seeing as they didn't explicitly turn 
PCRE on.

Overall though, a recipe FLAG is preferrable anyway.  Even the :0 part of 
the flag could be changed - originally, that was to indicate the number of 
conditions which followed the flag line, then it morphed into :0 because 
procmail could figure it out while parsing it anyway, and now, perhaps :1 
or :2 (etc) would be suitable as a regexp or functionality level 
specification.  This has the added benefit that when relating a recipe, the 
recipe itself shows the versioning needed.  A separate PCRE=ON type setting 
is likely to get forgotten somewhere along the line when discussing a 
recipe as one poster gets familiar with discussing newer syntax, and 
another user gloms onto it thinking it should work in their version.

Ideally, some setting which causes an older procmail to emit an error 
should be used to indicate newer functionality is expected.  That way, 
users don't end up with silent failures.

There are a number of ways to go about it.  I believe there's sufficient 
user demand for PCRE support that it should be seriously considered.

---
  Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering

  Procmail disclaimer: <http://www.professional.org/procmail/disclaimer.html>
  Please DO NOT carbon me on list replies.  I'll get my copy from the list.


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