On Sat, 12 Sep 1998, Marc Haber wrote:
> Has that been a design decision? It could be possible to ignore all
> whitespace that comes after backslash-newline. I don't think that
> would be considered broken since whitespace after backslash-newline
> usually is ignored by exim.
>
> One could have an alias file exim-enhanced by using a buzzline like "#
> exim alias file" analogous to the "exim filter" that enables the
> enhanced filter syntax.
Remember that this isn't just alias files. This is Exim's standard
lsearch lookup mechanism. (I have realized that this isn't too well
documented - there is already a note to improve it for the next
edition of the manual.) And remember also that alias files don't have to
be in lsearch format - they can be in dbm or NIS or whatever.
You are asking for a change in the way all lsearch lookups are done.
The current rule for lsearch is that continuation lines starting with
whitespace are concatenated with the previous line, keeping all the
leading white space.
> >You don't want to use \ to continue lines in alias files (see 22.1).
>
> Is that what you mean?
> |The list can be continued over several lines by starting each of the
> |continuation lines with white space.
Yes. That's the standard way alias files work, and Exim uses it as the
format for lsearch files.
> Usage of a back slash could be used to tell exim to ignore the white
> space that starts the next line.
Thinking this over, it seems to me that it is not unreasonable to make a
change to the lsearch code so that just a single space is retained at
the start of a continuation line. Technically this is an incompatible
change, but I don't imagine that it will have any effect in practice.
Does anybody else on the list want to comment? Object? Speak now...
However, the change is too late for the 2.03 release, which I'm planning
to put out later today.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
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