libelektra: inconsistent "comment" handling for ini and hosts plugin

The ini and hosts plugin handle “comments” differently.

The hosts plugin conforms to the metadata defined in METADATA.ini, however, ini handles comments differently. So for the following ini-file

# header

# comment
setting = value

the ini plugin will generate this meta data for setting key:

key 'user/test/puppet-test-ini/setting'
  string value: value
  meta data keys: 8
    comments: #2
    comments/#0: # header
    comments/#1: 
    comments/#2: # comment
    internal/ini/key/last: #0
    internal/ini/key/number: #0
    internal/ini/order: #0
    internal/ini/parent: user/test/puppet-test-ini

Issues/differences to METADATA.ini:

comments, not comment
comment/start not implemented/used
comment character # included in the value of the comment key

It would be very nice, if the ini plugin also implements the behaviour as defined in METADATA.ini, especially not adding the comment char ‘#’ to the actual value of the metadata key.

Maybe related to #1355

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 7 years ago
Comments: 15 (13 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

The XML example is quite interesting. From my point of view it’s better to treat blocks of comments as one comment. So generate one ‘comment’ metakey for each comment block. I think XML parsers also treat it this way. So for the above XML example, I would suggest to generate something like:

comment/#0 = 'comment1'
comment/#1 = 'comment2
'
...

Line wise parsers could treat comments line wise.

But I think XML has an additional interesting case:

<xy>
  <!--comment1-->
  <yz>some value</yz>
  <!-comment2-->
</xy>

where to place ‘comment2’ comment?

If I understood @fberlakovich correctly, space describes the whitespace before the comment char e.g. # and is therefore more important for inline comments? But I think it’s simpler to more intuitive to preserve the whitespace chars as they are, instead of counting them.

And the start key holds the comment char + whitespace between this comment char and the first non-whitespace comment?

BernhardDenner on Feb 26, 2017

Are you happy with the comment spec or do you also have suggestions/improvements for the spec itself?

Yes, I think there is nothing wrong with it. I found this problem, since I’m implementing a ‘comments’ parameter for my puppet module.

BernhardDenner on Feb 24, 2017