[IPython-dev] Regression bug in 0.8.x input filtering

[Dan Milstein]

Okay, I'm sold on the %r as a reasonable magic, and whitespace  
splitting as a reasonable req.

In looking to implement it, tho, I bumped up against something else  
-- trailing qmark fun.

Specifically, we jump through some hoops right now so that:

 > !thing?

and

 > !!thing?

Trigger the shell handler, and *not* the help handler.  This was  
particularly important/useful because the qmark is a part of some  
valid shell commands.

For the exact two examples above, this is not... easy... to get right  
if I start requiring the whitespace between the iFun and theRest of  
the line.  I'm not saying it's impossible, but we're starting to move  
from regex matching into parsing territory at that point.

But, as Fernando says, the shell generally requires whitespace, so  
maybe it's okay if !thing? triggers help, as long as:

 > !thing (.*)?

and

 > !!thing (.*)?

trigger the shell handler.  *That* I can fit into the current  
framework without too much pain.

Does that make sense / what do you all think?

-D



On May 24, 2007, at 2:23 AM, Fernando Perez wrote:

> On 5/23/07, Dan Milstein <danmil at comcast.net> wrote:
>> Hmm.  I can, I think without too much pain, force whitespace between
>> the possible magic/alias/autocall term and the rest of the line, but
>> I am just a bit hesitant, because I think that's sort of new
>> behavior.  The old pattern matching was very, very hard to fully
>> comprehend, but I don't think that's what it did (at least, not in
>> general).  I mean, if this is a regression, clearly it did
>> *something* like that, but I'd like to fully understand it before I
>> make a serious change like that.
>>
>> (Or maybe people like Ville's fine, fine idea about getting rid of %r
>> as a magic -- IMHO, we're kind of asking for trouble given that
>> r'something' is valid python).
>
> Well, I don't see why 'r' as a magic should cause any special problems
> that other magics don't have.  All magic calls should have at least
> one space between their name and their arguments, just like a normal
> shell works:
>
> # This works:
> maqroll[~/test]> ls foo*
> foo.ipy  foo.py  foo.tpl.txt  foo.txt
>
> # but omitting the spaces makes a shell unhappy:
> maqroll[~/test]> lsfoo*
> lsfoo*: No match.
> maqroll[~/test]> ls'foo*'
> lsfoo*: Command not found.
>
>
> So I don't see anything special in %r, other than its name being a
> single letter.  If we delete it, do we somehow want to prohibit
> single-letter magic names?  Of course not.
>
> The 'grammar' for magics should be:
>
> [%]name [-options] [args]
>
> where the % is optional only if automagic is on, the space is
> mandatory, the argument string is split using the same rules that a
> shell uses (we do it via shlex.split), and python variables are
> expanded into their string form via $ for convenience.
>
> Since magics are meant for quick control of things, they shouldn't
> really be themselves too complicated (monstrosities like %run
> notwithstanding).  Ideally, the magic should be a thin, -option
> controlled convenience wrapper around a library of normal Python
> functions that do the real work.  Said functions could then be used by
> code without jumping through as many contortions (with full python
> types for inputs as well as regular keywords),  and have a magic for
> convenience calling (perhaps only of a simplified form).
>
> The original magics as they are today, with a single argstring, are
> somewhat of a historical artifact but they match well traditional
> shell behavior, and they are thus fast and convenient for interactive
> use.  What we need to do is to make it easier to integrate such
> convenience on top of a more robust underlying layer that really uses
> the Python language in full.
>
> Cheers,
>
> f