Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-sieve-variables-04.txt

[Ned Freed <[e-mail]>]

> On Wed, 2005-07-20 at 14:54 -0700, Philip Guenther wrote:
> > Kjetil Torgrim Homme <[e-mail]> writes:
> > >there is no ABNF in [REGEX] to refer to, and a full list will be prone
> > >to inaccuracies.  not that I expect any changes to the syntax allowed by
> > >it, but ...
> >
> > That would be an argument for moving :quoteregex to the regex draft.  I
> > don't see any wording that limits support for :quotaregex to when the
> > regex extension is also required, so even implementations that don't
> > support regex will need to support :quoteregex.

> ouch, you're right.  suggestion:

> Modifier ":quoteregex"

>         Every character with special meaning for :regex (".", "*", "?"
>         etc.) is prefixed with "\" in the expansion.  This modifier is
>         only available when the "regex" extension is in effect.

Seems reasonable.

> > To me, that means that
> > this document needs to specify exactly what its behavior is.  (Yeah, you
> > could make [REGEX] a normative reference, but ... ick.)
> >
> > (Hmm, what if the regex extension is revised to support not just the
> > normal ("extended") POSIX regexps but also the old "basic" regexps?  The
> > quoting rules for the two are different.  (Basic regexps are _not_ a
> > subset of extended regexps for functionality, though the GNU
> > implementations have blurred that fact by extending them both.))

> :quoteregex specifically works for :regex (and the added sentence above
> locks the behavioural description to [REGEX]), if an :basicregex is
> introduced, there will be no quoting modifier for it.

> > Anyway, if :quoteregex isn't moved, then the minimal list of characters
> > that are escaped by :quoteregex is:
> >
> > \ . [ ^ $ ( ) { * + ? |

> that's just too ugly a duplication of specification.  if we need to add
> that, I'd rather split out the :regex bits.

> > On an unrelated point, the [SIEVE] reference needs to be changed to the
> > replacement I-D to dodge the "no side-effects in tests" restriction.

> well, 3028bis must be published first, anyway, so I'll update the
> reference when its done?

Might as well update it now as it is likely that the variables draft
will be approved before 3028bis comes out as an RFC. The RFC Editor
understands how to handle such dependencies and will update the
reference for you.

I have one additional suggestion. Thinking about it, I don't like the name
choices here. Specifically, ":quotewildcard" refers to the characters being 
quoted and not the context they are being quoted for, while ":quoteregex"
refers to the context they are being quoted for and not the characters being
quoted. How about changing ":quotewildcard" to ":quotematches" so both
names refer to the context?

				Ned