On Friday 20 February 2009, Andrei Pelinescu-Onciul wrote:
This would only make sense if we use match() for strings and switch() for ints. Otherwise it would be too confusing. Anyway I don't think the amount of details of the configuration language is ever a problem, as long as one gets meaningful error messages when checking the config (and before ser startup).
the amount of detail in the config language is IMHO important. The developers must document and test every single statement. Every user must read, learn and memorize each statement too.
I regulary need to check the documentation for some special cases in the config when i get asked for a review of some changes a co-worker did, because he still feel not completely confortable after years of administrating SER* systems. During all the time i spend on user channels i really rarely heard the that our server is to slow (only when some real bottlenecks were involved, like DB), the common complain is that the learning curve is too steep. Perhaps i'm lazy, but i'd not say that everybody out there is it too. ;-)
Good luck with runtime debugging then :-)
Ok, perhaps we just trade this problem for another one.. ;-) Anyway, i'm really curious about other opinions on this topic.
The other approaches trade-off less config details for guessing what the user intended, which IMO is much more dangerous. Is much better to get meaningful errors when running ser -cf ... , then getting unexpected behaviour at runtime (a very good example for this are typed variables vs. untyped ones or operators that try to guess the type and assume the user made the right choice).
I just checked in kamailio, we don't throw an error if one mix strings and ints in a switch case. We also check for a correct type of an integer in a mixed expression, e.g. if its a valid int value. I don't think that we convert them implicitly, as many pseudo-variables hold internally both a string and a integer value, so mixed expression will work just as intended in
Sorry, but that's just broken (mixed expressions).
Yes, i also would not recommend it at all. I was even surprised that it actually parse the configuration file..
Cheers,
Henning