Re: Suggested dual human/binary interface for proc/devfs

[George Bonser]

On Tue, 11 Apr 2000, Ed Carp wrote:

> George Bonser ([e-mail]) writes:
> 
> > device{eth0{ip_address=192.168.201.116;netmask=255.255.255.0};eth1{ip_address=192.168.202.117;netmask=255.255.255.0};}
> > 
> > or
> > 
> > device {
> > 	eth0 {
> > 		ip_address=192.168.201.116
> > 		netmask=255.255.255.0
> > 	}
> > 	eth1 {
> > 		ip_address=192.168.202.117
> > 		netmask=255.255.255.0
> > 	}
> > }
> > 
> > (same thing)
> > 
> > nests better and is more readable and there is already a bunch of code
> > available to parse this format.
> > 
> > The logic to parse this should be very easy.
> 
> In a shell script?  I don't think so.  Not nearly as easy as one-device-per-line.

Ok, I am completely miscommunicating to you. That format is NEVER intended
to be seen by a user (though they can get it if they want it). In this
case the output of 

pd <file>

might be

DEVICE        IP ADDRESS          NETMASK

eth0          192.168.201.116     255.255.255.0
eth1          192.168.202.117     255.255.255.0

OR

GROUP1_NAME    ATTRIBUTE 1         ATTRIBUTE2        ATTRIBUTE-N

LIST1-NAME    DATA-1              DATA-2            DATA-N
LIST2-NAME    DATA-1              DATA-2            DATA-N
LISTN-NAME    DATA-1              DATA-2            DATA-N

GROUP2_NAME	ATTRIBUTE

LIST1_NAME	DATA

GROUPN_NAME    ...

OR of one does dp --XML

<group1>
 <list1>
  attribute1=data1
  attribute2=data2
  attribute3=data3
 </list1>
 <list2>
  attribute1=data1
  attribute2=data2
  attribute3=data3
 </list2>
 <listN>
  attribute1=data1
  attribute2=data2
  attribute3=data3
 </listN>
<group2>
 <list1>
 <attribute=data>
</group2>
<groupN>
 ...