RFC: escape strings in KConfigBase

[Oswald Buddenhagen]

On Tue, May 15, 2007 at 11:30:59AM +0200, Andreas Hartmetz wrote:
> On Tuesday 15 May 2007 10:19:59 Thiago Macieira wrote:
> > You don't save user strings in keys. If your program is doing that, I
> > submit that you should redesign it.
> >
> Yeah I don't, actually. But what is to be won by imposing restrictions on 
> keys' names?
>
back then simplicity, now compatibility ...

> Suppose that you let users define configurable little things and your
> users are also allowed to name them. The little things will be nicely
> separated from the rest of your settings by putting them in their own
> group. Now you have to make up names like "item0001" and put the name
> in the value.
>
hmm, yes. that's what was always used so far.

> If you want to access your items by name and it should be fast, you
> now have to use another QHash in your program.
> 
if you want it to be fast you would probably preprocess the config anyway.
and since when is working with strings fast?

> "The escape sequences \s, \n, \t, \r, and \\ are supported, meaning ASCII 
> space, newline, tab, carriage return, and backslash, respectively." [1]
> 
> They could have gone the extra millimeter and allow escapting of [,],=,# but 
> nooo...
> 
escapes are only supported in values, not in keys (at least in kconfig).
i'm not saying this is perfect, but your line of argumentation falls
flat. ;)

> "Some keys can have multiple values; these should be separated by a semicolon. 
> Those keys which have several values should have a semicolon as the trailing 
> character. Semicolons in these values need to be escaped using \;"
> 
> Another thing to notice is that desktop files and KDE actually use different 
> list entry delimiters by default (';' vs. ','), and that the spec says that 
> lists should have a trailing ';'. [2]
> 
the delimiter can be passed to the list reading/writing functions.
note that only values that are actually supposed to be lists are
separator-escaped.

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