George Bonser <grep@shorelink.com> writes:
> On 9 Apr 2000, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> This is a good point to consider, but I've also found that when
>> non-programmers try to use those configuration files, they get confused
>> by the semicolons and keeping the newline is more intuitive for them.
>> But I don't have a lot of experience here, so I could be drawing
>> incorrect conclusions.
> It just means with the semicolons:
> group0 {
> item1=x;
> item2=y;
[...]
> };
> Is the same as:
> group0{item1=x;item2=y;subgroup1{item1=a;item2=b};item3=c;};group1{item1=z;};
> You can just ignore whitespace completely.
I understand the theory, and it makes sense from the perspective of making
it C-like, but like I said having to put the semicolons in there and
realizing that they're not part of the value, escaping semicolons where
necessary, and so forth I've found to be confusing to non-programmers who
are trying to work with those configuration files. C programmers don't
have a problem for the most part, but a lot of folks who aren't C
programmers have to edit the config files.
It doesn't matter as much for a /proc format, since there are very few
writers and the average user only has to read.
-- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Apr 15 2000 - 21:00:12 EST