On 04 Jun 2006 11:18:54 +0200, Dominik Vogt wrote: > > On Sun, Jun 04, 2006 at 12:50:19AM +0000, Mikhael Goikhman wrote: > > I think the ultimate solution is explained in file doc/todo-vars. > > Among other things, it says that we only have variables in format $[], > > all one letter variables are deprecated, and that a user may request > > not to quote a value or choose from several quoting styles. > > > > However, we should decide about the default behaviour of variables > > (when no explicit filters are specified). > > > > All variables with integer value like $[w.x] or fixed string value like > > $[version.num] should not be quoted by default. > > > > All window name related variables should be qingle-quoted by default. > > There is no question here, because names are really arbitrary. > > > > However, it is not clear about other less-arbitrary strings. I.e. should > > $. be quoted? Currently it is quoted, but there is almost no chance > > someone has quote characters in fvwm directories. On the other hand, > > spaces are a bit more likely, so quoting here has pluses (less to type) > > and minuses (may be surprised). > > > > Should $[w.iconfile] and $[w.miniiconfile] be quoted by default? > > I don't know. > > > And finally, should $[ENV_VAR] like $[PATH] be quoted by default? > > Hm. > > > I see pros and cons to do this. Most of variable values (even $PATH) has > > an expected value, so a user may guess about a proper quoting on his own. > > On the other hand, the consistent solution would be to always quote any > > string var. > > Hm, isn't the right way to fix this mess to rewrite the parser > from scratch? I have the impression that we're trying to solve > problems that are caused bay the flawed design.
Maybe. But I don't think the current parser is very messy, I may understand it. It provides neat functionality and works pretty well. A better design for the parser may certainly be discussed, but I think we may start from something smaller, like variables. We want to have this paradigm regardless of the parser design. Please update file docs/todo-vars if you see improvements to the variable spec. The questions in this message are from the analysis stage. We should understand first, for example, how we want variables to be quoted either by default or in different situations, before starting to redesign. Regards, Mikhael.
