Dear Tom,
In message 20211018142404.GR7964@bill-the-cat you wrote:
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?
None that I know of.
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.
Yes, I know. But then, changing existing APIs is not nice.
Of course yes, if we can just make the parser handle it, without it also being a tricky nightmare, that's the better solution.
Exactly.
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.
So far, only NUL and '=' were impossible to use in a variable name.
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?
We cannot know what people have been using in their environemnts. Even for those boards that are in mainline, the environment settings used in real life are often totally different.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk