Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 01:02:23 +1030 (CST) From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> To: giles@nemeton.com.au (Giles Lean) Cc: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, config@freebsd.org, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Kernel config metasyntax Message-ID: <199701281432.BAA12099@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <199701281253.XAA15463@nemeton.com.au> from Giles Lean at "Jan 28, 97 11:53:33 pm"
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Giles Lean stands accused of saying: > > > Later, anything that cares about options can access all of this and > > make up its own mind; the parser should not need to know or care > > what the attributes and their valus are.) > > In practice with tools implemented this way there is usually little > semantic checking, so typos such as incorrectly spelt attributes are > not detected and the Wrong Thing happens. Er, you don't mean semantic checking, you mean content checking, correct? As I've already observed, the parser should not know anything about the _content_ of the attributes it parses, and thus cannot possibly attempt to validate them. > Tools with more integrated semantic checks (typical with yacc :) don't > have this problem. They also have rigid and untrivially-extensible syntaxen. > If you use TCL, please validate input carefully. Insofar as is possible, sure. I don't think, however, that the sort of checking that you describe is feasible, desirable or even necessary, given that the input isn't going to be user-supplied. > Giles -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[
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