On Mon, Oct 18, 2021 at 04:10:34PM +0200, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
Dear Tom,
In message 20211018133728.GQ7964@bill-the-cat you wrote:
And please see also my comments about changing the autostart functionality for the user.
Perhaps we should just make "+" an illegal character in the variable name, for consistency?
And break backward compatibility? I'd rather see a better definition of the syntax of the environment files, plus maybe a more powerful parser.
Are there examples today of scripts that use "+" in the variable names? That maybe someone wrote a custom an private thing that uses + in the name isn't the best argument. Someone saying that did would be better.
I mean, there is no technical reason to forbid the '+' character - and then it's only at the end of the variable name.
Of course yes, if we can just make the parser handle it, without it also being a tricky nightmare, that's the better solution.
Hm... I can't find it right now but did I not also read about other restrictions to variable names, like they must noch begin with '_' when using this new tool?
Any invalid characters need to be clearly documented, if they aren't, yes.
I feel it is wrong to place new restrictions on something that was constant for 21 years, just because our parser cannot parse it...
Sure. But if it's also the case that for 21 years no one has been using foo+bar, baz+, etc, in their variable names, maybe we just document that's not valid and move on?