problems with PATTERN/LINE in ainsl(1)

[Michael Tautschnig]

> On 10/15/2009 10:12 PM, Michael Tautschnig wrote:
> >> On 30.09.2009 09:02, Juergen Kahnert wrote:
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 03:06:41AM +0200, Darshaka Pathirana wrote:
> >>>>>> ainsl -a $target/etc/sudoers "%adm ALL = NOPASSWD: /bin/su -[mp]"
> >>>> Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks!
> >>> try this as a quick workaround:
> >>>
> >>>     ainsl -a $target/etc/sudoers '%adm ALL = NOPASSWD: /bin/su -[mp]' '^%adm ALL = NOPASSWD: /bin/su -.mp.$'
> >> Thx very much. Figured that out a bit later (but was to lazy to post
> >> it here).
> >>
> >> Nevertheless the question is: is it a mistake on my side?
> >>
> > 
> > I don't think so, I think it's a weakness in ainsl. And the \[ \] probably
> > doesn't work either because the shell will strip off the \, you'll need
> > something like \\[ or even \\\[.
> > 
> > Thomas, shouldn't ainsl not escape anything while matching and instead use \Q
> > and \E in the match operation to disable regexp specials? Of course, it should
> > take care of ^ and $ and change that to ^\Q$line\E$.
> 
> Any progress on this?
> 

I just noticed that there are several options that might be helpful, but
probably not even -Q does exactly what you would want it to do. I tried to come
up with a patch, but the sometimes-regular-expressions-in-LINE-are-escaped thing
is so weird that I gave up. Sorry, Thomas, but this violates your beloved KISS
principle in several ways. For example, using -Q without a pattern might give
very strange results.

ainsl takes a LINE and an optional PATTERN. Why not do it the straightforward
way that PATTERN is a regular expression and LINE is always escaped using \Q,
\E and anchored using ^ $ when used as a pattern? Are -q, -Q, -s just a series of
historic hacks or are there actually good reasons for this set of options? 

Puzzled,
Michael

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