Re: Replying to a specific message
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On Wednesday, August 27 at 06:10 PM, quoth Shreevatsa R:
> The only "parsing" that the pattern parser needs to do is break up
> the user-input string into "logical parts" of the form (~i EXPR),
> (~s EXPR), etc., and then each corresponding part can do its job
> with the actual string that was input. (The parser might also have
> to do some logical AND/OR/NOT operations, but that's later.) It has
> no reason to poke at the actual EXPR strings and mess with them. The
> parser already has a () logical grouping operator; I maintain that
> this is all it needs. By simply refusing to interpret
> ~i foo\ and\ bar
> as one argument to ~i and instead requiring either ~i "foo and bar" or
> ~i (foo and bar), it can completely do away with the extra dequoting
> step and pass to the regex engine the same strings it gets, intact. It
> spends an extra step parsing the string and dequoting all characters,
> when all it needs to do is something much simpler.
So under your system, if I say:
~i "foo and bar"
Should the regex engine see:
foo and bar
...or should the regex engine see:
"foo and bar"
In other words, should the quotes (or parentheses) be stripped out?
If not, how can I match something that doesn't have quotes in it (such
as the Message-ID)?
If they should, how can I match something that DOES have quotes in it?
> Anyway, nevermind this rant; back to the original question: Given
> that mutt has no syntax for specifying that a string must be
> interpreted literally (an annoying omission), "escaping" is
> necessary. Simply replacing each $ with \\$ (or with [$]) works for
> everything I have encountered, so the question is entirely
> hypothetical: what more might I have to worry about, and has anyone
> thought about the problem of escaping a string for mutt and solved
> it? There is no consistency to speak of among regular expression
> implementations; each has its own quirks; and simply using another
> language's "escape" function might not work with mutt.
THAT is a far more useful question... I don't have a good generic
answer for you, though.
~Kyle
- --
Reliability means never having to say you're sorry.
-- Dr. Daniel J. Bernstein
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