* Peter da Silva <pe...@taronga.com> [2006-04-03 14:15]: > On Apr 3, 2006, at 5:49 AM, A. Pagaltzis wrote: > >Even after I tell you that I planned to have the filter be > >written in Perl? :-) > > Then it'll have the same problem as procmail and sieve.
Namely? (Dunno what you’re referring to.) > >I’m just very tired of little languages. > > Filter rules shouldn't be a general purpose language except as > an exception. They should be something you can put in a > relational database without running any of them as code except > in extreme cases. That’s why I want a DSL; I want to write my rules largely declaratively and let the library worry about the details. > Perl *is* "another arbitrarily limited crappy mini-language". It’s a proper programming language with fully orthogonal, composable constructs. > >>Any match in a [mailbox] section goes to that mailbox. > > >Mmm, I was thinking about something along similar lines, only > >with a Real Syntax by virtue of it being a DSL. > > Real Syntax is a limitation. Once you have hundreds of rules > keeping them straight becomes a nightmare. Obviously we have very different scale requirements. > How do you say > > SELECT UNIQUE r.mailbox,m.match FROM rules r,matches m > WHERE r.rule_set = m.rule_set AND m.header='From' AND > m.match_type=EXACT; > > when your rules are in Perl? I don’t need to. But if I did I’d cast this in something like Prolog where you can do that sort of stuff and more besides. > Then you can perform fast relational lookups on the match > table, and you only need scripts for exceptions. That sort of performance is just not necessary for me. The situation I want to address is a procmailrc of a few hundred lines with extremely formulaic rules (denser syntax please!) and a few bits of funny trickery thrown in around some corners (painful, can’t somebody throw me a real language?!). Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>
