Received: (from majordom@localhost)
	by hyperreal.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id VAA27842;
	Wed, 25 Jun 1997 21:00:39 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from twinlark.arctic.org (twinlark.arctic.org [204.62.130.91])
	by hyperreal.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id VAA27762
	for <new-httpd@apache.org>; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 21:00:32 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (qmail 12613 invoked by uid 500); 26 Jun 1997 04:00:14 -0000
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 21:00:14 -0700 (PDT)
From: Dean Gaudet <dgaudet@arctic.org>
To: new-httpd@apache.org
Subject: Re: regex syntax
In-Reply-To: 
 <Pine.HPP.3.95.970625201359.23824A-100000@ace.nueva.pvt.k12.ca.us>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.95dg3.970625205001.7978Z-100000@twinlark.arctic.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: new-httpd-owner@apache.org
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: new-httpd@apache.org

On Wed, 25 Jun 1997, Alexei Kosut wrote:
> Does anyone have any thoughts on the matter?

I've been trying to figure out how to implement the Alias regex thing
by using a Location that matches the regex... but I haven't been satisifed
with the syntax or the implications... i.e.

<Location ~ /foobar(.*)>
    Alias /path/to/$1
</Location>

The ()-pairs set $-values for the entire block.  But this poses so many
problems it's not worth it (consider nested <> blocks, you quickly need
scoping, and you start down the road to a full language).

I really would like to have a more uniform syntax throughout the config.
We have a lot of "string match this" arguments which fall into these
cases:

- direct match (w/ or w/o case)
- regex match (w/ or w/o case)
- ?* wildcarding match
- "domain matches" i.e. .foobar.com matching *.foobar.com
- "ip matches" i.e. 204.62.130. (we should add CIDR notation
    204.62.130.0/24, and bind &-netmask notation: 204.62.130.0&255.255.255.0)

We could quite easily have an expression parser that understood each
of those, and spat out a match_t, which is then executed at run time
against the appropriate input.

Dean