Fwd: Re: [Nix-dev] [PATCH] t/allow-arbitrary-strinsg-in-names

[Marc Weber]

Excerpts from Jeff Johnson's message of Tue Jul 20 18:58:07 +0200 2010:
> Exposing whitespace in file names just asks for a whopping
> amount of scripting breakage. Your patch (assuming correct)
> is the entry point for a world of tedium.

Hi Jeff,

keep in mind that we're not talking about a universal language such as
/bin/sh which is used in git. We're talking about the DSL Nix with
limited scope.

I only care about being able to use these additional chars
"-.0123456789" so that I can encode package names including versions.

let attrs = {
 git-1.8 : { src = fetchurl .. };
 git-2.0.RC5 : { src = fetchurl .. };
};

looks fine to me. So maybe this should be allowed when parsing attr
names as well?

The "." char conflicts with selecting attr values:

attrs.git-1.8.src
attrs.git-1.8.RC5.rsc (??)

I choose the string quoting because everybody is familiar with it.

I choose the "space in name" example only to illustrate the string
encoding. I don't expect anybody using a space. So I didn't even think
about it neither do I think its worth adding restrictions.

Is adding more code to the parser / lexer worth being able to write the
git example as shown above?

Marc Weber`