Re: [PATCH] make slash-rules more readable

From: Dr. Adam Nielsen <admin@in-ici.net>
Date: May 17, 2019, 21:43 UTC
Message-ID: <469c37d9-4491-9072-211f-d9d8614413e0@in-ici.net>
In-Reply-To: <094f3746-67c9-0284-0593-eb6b24d5c4a3@in-ici.net>

Show 18 quoted lines

> Another thing that I noticed is that its not mentioned anywhere that the 
> pattern use a slash as a directory separator (instead of a backslash), 
> its only clear from the examples. Maybe its worth to mention it in the 
> "PATTERN FORMAT" section. Also its maybe worth to introduce the term 
> "leading slash" and "trailing slash" because they will be of importance 
> of the following paragraphs. Something like this after the paragraph of 
> "!":
> 
>      [...] for example, "\!important!.txt".
> 
>      A slash `/` is used as a directory separator.
>      A leading slash (that is if the pattern begins with a slash)
>      or a trailing slash (that is if the pattern ends with a slash)
>      have special meaning and are explained below.
> 
>      If the pattern contains a trailing slash, it would only find
>      a match with a directory. [...]
>

I changed my mind about this last addition. I think it is not very readable and there is no need to explain leading/trailing slash. Maybe one could just note it like this:

       [...] for example, "\!important!.txt".

       A slash `/` is used as a directory separator.
       A leading and trailing slash have special meaning
       and are explained in the following.

       If the pattern ends with a slash, it would only find
       a match with a directory. [...]

then I would also add:

      If the pattern does not end with a slash, it would find a match
      with a file or directory.

Two notes about two sentences that I proposed a while ago:

 > + - If the pattern contains no slash "`/`" (except an optional 
trailing slash),
 > +   the ...

I think that this sentence is not very readable. The exceptional case in the brackets makes it over complicated.

 > + - A pattern that contains a non-trailing slash is matched

And I don't like this phrase either. I think its too easy to confuse it with "A pattern that contains no trailing slash".

So I would suggest to replace both with the following:

     If the pattern contains no slash or only a trailing slash, [...].
     Otherwise (when it contains a non-trailing slash) the pattern
     is matched [...].

All the best, Adam