Re: [exim] More integer annoyances in 4.65

On 1/3/07 2:20 AM, "Philip Hazel" <ph10@???> wrote:

> The "not totally logical, but does what a lot of people want" fix would
> be to treat an empty string as "0".

It's important, I think, to remember what we're doing.

We're not designing Exim configuration syntax and semantics from scratch.
If we were, we could argue about typed variables vs untyped and initialized
vs uninitialized variables (as so many other venues do constantly) being
"better" or "easier".

What we have done is make a change which renders previously-working
configurations--in large quantity--non-working. Philip has always tried to
avoid doing that (except in revisions which change the integer part of the
version number), and I think that was wise even though it has led to some
awkward constructs.

Therefore, I think the right solution, given where we are, is to make as
many of the newly-broken configurations work again, even if people from some
programming backgrounds--but not all--would not design the syntax and
semantics that way working from scratch.

It would seem that putting in Philip's suggested patch would be the way to
achieve this.

I regret that I did not see this coming when the original change was
proposed--I don't think I use the now-failing constructs much if at all in
our configurations, so I didn't notice the problem.

--John