Subj : PCRE in Synchronet?
To   : Angus Mcleod
From : Digital Man
Date : Sun Dec 19 2004 01:54 pm

  Re: PCRE in Synchronet?
  By: Angus Mcleod to Digital Man on Fri Dec 17 2004 10:11 pm

 >  >  > I was hoping that a suitable library had already been included in the 
 >  >  > code-base.  I don't much fancy sticking an entire library in there to 
 >  >  > silly proggy or two!
 >  >
 >  > What exactly did you want to do?
 > 
 > I'd only got a vague idea on improving the filtering in various ways:
 > 
 > * Read the entire twit-list once before starting on the packet, and build
 >   a structure in-memory, rather than re-reading the file repeatedly for
 >   each message.

I prefer to optimize where there is a perceived (or profiled) bottleneck in
performance. So far, reading the twitlist (per message) hasn't shown to be
that. Mainly thanks to the excellent caching in modern OSes I'm sure.

 > * Support some sort of network-specific or host-specific lists like say
 >   maybe twitlist.vert.cfg for filters applicable to a specific host and/or
 >   twitlist.dove-net.cfg to filter by specific network.  Default twitlist.cfg
 >   to apply to all packets.
 > 
 > * Expand syntax to make filters more useful.  I'm thinking allow the
 >   field(s) to be matched to be specified, and the action to be taken to be
 >   specified as well.  Currently, a name is checked against From: and To:
 >   and if matched it's dropped:
 > 
 > 	Drop: From= To= Newborn	
 > 
 >   But also allow (say):
 > 
 > 	Drop: Subject= Body= NetJuke
 > 
 >   and perhaps:
 > 
 > 	Moveto RELIGION: Subj= Law and Evo0ltion
 > 
 > And so forth.  As you can see, poorly considered at present, and no doubt
 > worth considerable more thought, but it would obviously be valuable to be
 > able to use RE's in matching.

Most of what you've described above doesn't directly rely on RE's. And, like I
said, you do have the .can-style matching specifiers at your disposal
currently.

I *am* planning on converting twitlist.cfg to a much more extensible .ini
format in the future (just like most, if not all, the other
application-specific configuration files). Example:

[Jokester]
Match=to,from
Action=delete
Expire=Jan-01-2010

.... Something like that.

                                                  digital man

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