AW: list separator in config entries

[Nhuh Put]

> Von: Andreas Pakulat
> Gesendet: Montag, 8. Oktober 2007 19:47
> An: kde-core-devel at kde.org
> Betreff: Re: list separator in config entries
> 
> On 08.10.07 03:41:35, Nhuh Put wrote:
> > I have by now all to me known issues fixed in KConfig except one failing
> > testcase about list separators. The problem occurs on writing a list
> like
> > "foo\" "bar". This will lead to "foo\, bar" which will be interpreted as
> an
> > escaped separator from the read functions. This did work until now,
> because
> > the escaping was done in KConfigGroup together with the list
> concatenation.
> > But as the escaping now happens in the backend, this is not easily
> possible
> > anymore. I could write a quick fix in about half an hour for the beta
> > release, but this will either move back the escaping to KConfigGroup
> which
> > makes this whole KConfig redesign partially useless or a introduce
> another
> > bad hack like double escaping backslashes in list entries or something.
> > Escaping in the KConfigGroup would make it very hard for backends with
> > native list support like the Windows registry or afaik ldap.
> > The main reason for this trouble is the support for different kinds of
> list
> > separators in KConfigGroup. Those are needed because the KDE config
> files
> > are not freedesktop .desktop compliant because freedesktop uses ';' as a
> > separator and we use a ',' but we still have to read .desktop files,
> which
> > is the only reason afaik.
> > Supporting different separators would again be hard for backends with
> native
> > list support.
> > I would suggest making the KDE config files standards compliant and
> support
> > only the semicolon as a list separator, but I don't if this is possible
> > regarding schedules/existing config files/other problems I'm not aware
> of.
> 
> I agree here. Even if the rest of the writing-code is not moved to the
> backend "now", I don't see the problem with only allowing semicolon as
> separator.
> 
> The only real question is how much code will break with that, i.e. how
> many users of the custom separator exist in KDE's trunk?
> 
> Regarding breaking existing config files: We don't support reading path
> entries from KDE3 config files without converting them before anyway, so
> I don't see a problem with breaking lists reading as well (without
> converting them before the first reading).
> 
> Andreas
> 
> --
> You will soon forget this.

Not very many. I doubt there are any at all besides KDesktopFile. It's not needed for anything. A bigger problem are the write(Path)Entry methods, because there is another argument after the separator, but as this argument is also very rarely used, I don't see many problems.

	PutHuhn