Re: [RFC/PATCH 04/11] ref-filter: add 'ifexists' atom

[Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 11:46 PM, Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 2:51 AM, Matthieu Moy
> <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> wrote:
>> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
>>
>>> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
>>>
>>>>> Couldn't think of a better replacer, any suggestions would be welcome :)
>>>>
>>>> See below.
>>>> ...
>>>> One way to do all of the above is ...
>>>
>>> Note that is just "one way", not the only or not necessarily the
>>> best.  It certainly is not the easiest, I think.
>>>
>>>     %(if:atom)...%(endif)
>>>
>>> might be easier to implement.
>>
>> And I find it easier to read or write too. Nested parenthesis in a
>> format string make them really tricky. That removes the need for
>> escaping since the content of the if/endif is a format string like the
>> others, it can use the same escaping rules (IIRC, %% to escape a %).
>>
>
> THat's a really good point. Will work on this :)
>
> --
> Regards,
> Karthik Nayak
> --


Not sure how much work it would take to extent other atoms to this
behavior, such as %(padright) and %(align) and such, that way they
could operate on literals and so forth.

Maybe not worth it as part of this GSoC project, as it may be too
complicated, but maybe something to mark as a "TODO" for future or
something?

The only issue being that it might mean we have to keep the old
implementation too for backwards compatibility .. Maybe it's easier to
implement that I think, or maybe it's far more challenging than I
think....

Regards,
Jake