Re: [tz] Proposal to restrict field separator to tab
Tobias Conradi wrote:
This is a proposal to restrict field separator to tab
Current seems to be: "any number of white space characters"
Reason: More than one person in 2013 alone reported problems parsing the data.
http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2013-May/019160.html http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2013-September/020189.html
One person in 2013 assumes the current statement means something different from its English language meaning
/ Actually, "one or more" seems to be meant rather than "any number" / http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2013-May/019160.html
As someone who would benefit from that change, I'm still a little look warm. Use of 'tab' in the ZONE line would make pulling apart easy, but then the follow on lines need different handling. It is nice that these documents 'reads' nicely looking down the page, but removing a tab from the follow on lines to keep the fields in order will then make things messy as a text document. That said, I am using the tab on these lines to indicate how that line is handled, so a space there would cause a problem anyway, and I drop the 'extra' field to line things up again ... -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
On Mon, Sep 16, 2013, at 6:58, Lester Caine wrote:
That said, I am using the tab on these lines to indicate how that line is handled, so a space there would cause a problem anyway, and I drop the 'extra' field to line things up again ...
Why do you need something there to show how the line is handled? It's a continuation line because it's immediately after a zone/continuation line that doesn't have a termination date. As I understand the format, it's completely valid to have a continuation line with _no_ leading whitespace.
random832@fastmail.us wrote:
That said, I am using the tab on these lines to indicate how that line is handled, so a space there would cause a problem anyway, and I drop the 'extra' field to line things up again ... Why do you need something there to show how the line is handled? It's a continuation line because it's immediately after a zone/continuation line that doesn't have a termination date. As I understand the format, it's completely valid to have a continuation line with_no_ leading whitespace.
Convenience .... MOST of the tabulated data I'm pulling into systems one identifies the type of line and then pulls the data into the correct separate fields. IF a comment was included in the listing, then one would see the '#' and push that line into the info memo. The tab is currently a convenient tag to check then throw away just as the '#' is. Actually that then aligns the remaining fields with the right elements. But I'm just reusing existing routines. Reworking will come once I have data to play with. -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
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