.desktop file format ambiguity

[Vincent Untz]

Le mardi 14 octobre 2008, à 11:44 -0400, Boris Zbarsky a écrit :
> I have a question about the treatment of whitespace in .desktop files 
> [1].  The file format description says:
> 
>     Entries in the file are {key,value} pairs in the format:
> 
>     Key=Value
> 
>     Space before and after the equals sign should be ignored; the = sign
>     is the actual delimiter.
> 
>     Only the characters A-Za-z0-9- may be used in key names.
> 
> I see two ways of interpreting this: either "the = sign is the actual 
> delimiter" (and whitespace is ignored purposes of splitting the line 
> into key and value, and thus ends up in the key or the value depending 
> on which side of the '=' it's on) or whitespace is ignored completely. 
> The latter would match the "Only the characters A-Za-z0-9- may be used 
> in key names" thing better.

I'm not quite sure how it's ambiguous: the delimiter is = and spaces
before/after this sign should be ignored. So those lines are exactly the
same lines:

Key=Value
Key    =          Value
Key =Value
Key= Value

I'm not quite sure how you came to your first way of interpreting this;
it doesn't feel logical to me. But if we can clarify things, sure. Any
proposal to improve the wording? :-)

Vincent

-- 
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