[pacman-dev] Config file handling (was: [PATCH] Change -z|--showsize flag to ShowSize pacman.conf option)

[Aaron Griffin]

On 6/1/07, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/1/07, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/1/07, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Aaron and I both want to move this config file parsing to the front
> > > end; any objections to this? It will be quite a change, but we can
> > > make it much more robust while moving it. Is anyone familiar with how
> > > config file parsing is done by other programs? It seems like a very
> > > manual process currently, and a malformed config file brings pacman
> > > down. I also think we should try to continue when we encounter an
> > > unrecognized option.
> >
> > What do you mean "other programs"? As in, an elegant parsing system?
> > Or how other apps parse pacman.conf?
>
> How other C-coded apps parse their config files in general. I don't do
> it often in C, so I have no idea how it is usually done.

Depends on the complexity of the app, but most of the time it's done
manually in a similar way that we do it... that is, getline, strcmp,
strcmp, strcmp, loop, done.

I actually don't think our parsing is all that bad, it could just use
some more info on the error case.