On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 01:11:16PM +0200, Henning Brauer wrote:
> * Stefan Sperling <s...@stsp.name> [2016-06-21 11:15]:
> > Generally, I would appreciate more detailed error messages from the pf.conf
> > parser. I recall several occasions where pfctl threw "syntax error" and more
> > specific error reporting would have saved me some time with finding the
> > silly mistake I made. And in this case the ruleset loads successfully even
> > though, while parsing, we already know it's not going to work as intended...
>
> true, that's shared by all yacc-style parsers, if the grammar doesn't
> match you just get syntax error without much of a hint what's wrong.
The reason pfctl is not giving much details about the error is also
determined by the way it is written.
Take for example bc(1), also using a yacc parser.
$ bc
1=a
bc: stdin:1: syntax error: = unexpected
a = b c
bc: stdin:2: syntax error: c unexpected
a =&9
bc: stdin:3: illegal character: & unexpected
Which is more helpfull than what pfctl produces in similar cases.
-Otto
>
> however, the ruleset in this case does NOT load.
>
> <brahe@quigon> $ echo '"a macro with spaces"="foo"\npass from $a\ macro\
> with\ spaces"' | pfctl -nvf -
> a macro with spaces = "foo"
> stdin:2: macro 'a' not defined
> stdin:2: syntax error
>
> > Only as long as it doesn't make the parser code overly complex, of course.
> > But currently the balance is tilted too much towards terse error messages
> > for my taste. So I liked benno's first diff.
>
> it's just a tiny check indeed, which swings the "cost" (not in
> financial terms) vs benefit pendulum towards the benefit side, yes.
>
> --
> Henning Brauer, h...@bsws.de, henn...@openbsd.org
> BS Web Services GmbH, http://bsws.de, Full-Service ISP
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