On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Greg Ward wrote:
> On 13 September 2001, Vadim Vygonets said:
> > Seconded. Philip, you may wish to introduce typed literals to
> > the Exim configuration language, such as:
> >
> > /foobar/ Regexp
> > "foobar" Expanded string
> > 'foobar' Not expanded string
>
> Yes -- if you're taking one good idea from Perl, why not take two more
> at the same time? Perl's quoting/expansion rules are a tad complex, but
> they seem to me a lot less scary than Exim's.
I fear it's too late now. But even if it wasn't, that doesn't solve the
problem. _Sometimes_ you _do_ want to have an expansion that turns into
a regex. Consider
${if match {$some-header:}{${rxquote:$local_part}}...
If all regex strings were never expanded, you couldn't do that.
Perl, of course, has exactly the same problem. You can include
$variables inside /.../ if you want to. And you have to escape \ and $
inside there.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
