On 20 February 2017 at 15:36, Rob Tompkins <chtom...@apache.org> wrote:
>
>> On Feb 20, 2017, at 10:30 AM, sebb <seb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 20 February 2017 at 14:55, Rob Tompkins <chtom...@apache.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Feb 20, 2017, at 4:31 AM, sebb <seb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 19 February 2017 at 14:29, Raymond DeCampo <r...@decampo.org
>>>> <mailto:r...@decampo.org>> wrote:
>>>>> I am trying to see how having the proposed unescape() method leads to an a
>>>>> useful escape method.
>>>>>
>>>>> E.g. clearly unescape("&") would evaluate to "&". So would
>>>>> unescape("&amp;"). That means the proposed escape() method would also
>>>>> have the same output for "&" and "&amp;".
>>>>>
>>>>> I think a better approach for an idempotent escape would be to just
>>>>> unescape the string once, and then run the traditional escape.
>>>>
>>>> That does not eliminate the problems, as you state below.
>>>>
>>>>> You will
>>>>> still have issues if the user intended to escape the string "&" but
>>>>> you
>>>>> are never going to crack that without some kind of state saving.
>>>>
>>>> That is my exact point.
>>>>
>>>> Since it's not possible for the function to work reliably, we should
>>>> not mislead users by pretending that there is a magic method that
>>>> works.
>>>>
>>>>> Than given that the functionality is available via to consecutive calls to
>>>>> existing methods, I would probably be disinclined to include it in the
>>>>> library.
>>>>
>>>> +1
>>>
>>> I’m a (+1) for removal as well.
>>>
>>> Also, I didn’t mean for my example to sound like a proposal. I merely was
>>> trying to get to a potentially valuable stateless idempotent string escape
>>> function. Its contrivance it quite clear.
>>>
>>> Any other comments out there?
>>>
>>> We could provide a stateful escaper (that figures out how many escapes a
>>> string is in), or a method that returns the number of escapes in a string
>>> is. Again, I’m not all that sure on the value of such methods.
>>
>> I don't think it's possible to work out the number of times a string
>> has been escaped.
>
> That may indeed be true, but it is possible to return the number of times
> unescape need be run before subsequent unescapes yield the same result.
That in itself is potentially ambiguous.
Does the unescaper keep going until there are no valid escape
sequences left, or does it stop when there is a least one ampersand
which is not part of a valid escape sequence?
> Again, I’m not sure if this is a valuable measure to concern ourselves with.
I don't think it provides anything useful.
>>
>> The most one can do is to determine if a string has not been escaped.
>> That would be the case where a string has one or more unescaped
>> characters in it.
>> For example "This & that" has obviously not been escaped.
>>
>> However if a string has no un-escaped characters it it, that does not
>> necessarily mean that it has already been escaped.
>> For example: "This & that".
>> This might have been escaped - or it might not.
>
> Ah, I was using the definition of “having been escaped” to be that the string
> contains escape sequences.
>
>> For example it could be the answer to: "How does one code 'This &
>> that' in HTML?”
>>
>> The application has to keep track of the escape-state of the string.
>
> Definitely agreed with your definition of “having been escaped."
>
>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> -Rob
>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 12:04 PM, Rob Tompkins <chtom...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> In preparation for the 1.0 release, I think we should address Sebb's
>>>>>> concern in TEXT-40 about the attempt to create "idempotent" string escape
>>>>>> methods. By idempotent I mean someMethod("some string") =
>>>>>> someMethod(someMethod(someMethod(...someMethod("some string")))), a
>>>>>> single application of a method is equal to any number of the applications
>>>>>> of the method on the same input.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Below I lay out a mechanism by which it is possible to write such
>>>>>> methods,
>>>>>> but I don’t know the value in writing such methods. I'm merely expressing
>>>>>> that idempotency is a possibility.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For string "un-escaping", I believe that we can write a method that,
>>>>>> indeed, is idempotent by simply running the un-escape method the finite
>>>>>> number of un-escapings to get to the point at which the string remains
>>>>>> unchanged between applications of the un-escaping method. (I believe
>>>>>> that I
>>>>>> can write a proof that all un-escape methods have such a point, if that
>>>>>> is
>>>>>> needed for the sake of discussion).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If indeed we can create an idempotent un-escape method, then we can
>>>>>> simply
>>>>>> take that method run it, and then run the escaping method one time. If we
>>>>>> always completely unescape and then escape once then we do have an
>>>>>> idempotent method.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Such a method might not be all that valuable to the user though.
>>>>>> Furthermore, this just explains one way to create such an idempotent
>>>>>> method. Whether or not more or more valuable methods exists, would take
>>>>>> some more though.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Anyone have any thoughts? My feeling is that it might be more effort than
>>>>>> it's worth to ensure that any string is only "singly encoded.” Further,
>>>>>> we
>>>>>> probably should give a look at the “escape_once” methods in
>>>>>> StringEsapeUtils.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Cheers
>>>>>> -Rob
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