[pacman-dev] [PATCH 2/6] Don't do eval

[Dan McGee]

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Dave Reisner <d at falconindy.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 01:14:02AM +0800, lolilolicon wrote:
>> Simply `eval'ing configurations from pacman.conf is really bad practice.
>> Use proper string parsing instead.  The parser implemented here aborts
>> as soon as it gets the first assignment, being consistent with pacman.
>
> I'm not really a fan of using awk, here, either -- totally unreadable.
> We've been bitten by numerous portability issues with awk in the past.
> I recommend testing against mawk and nawk if you're ever going to use
> awk in our codebase. Also to note bad practice: embedding shell
> variables in the awk expressions. You should be defining the variable
> within the program with the -v flag to awk.
>
> See how we do this in scripts/pacman-key in pure bash (func is
> get_from() -- yes, its a terrible name). Given how frequently we seem to
> do this, it might be a candidate for pulling out and maintaining a
> single implementation in the scripts/library dir.

What a crazy idea! And by crazy, I mean great. This is definitely
script-library eligible in my mind, so I'd rather we focus on getting
the "one true way" worked out and into a file so all our scripts can
benefit.

-Dan