[Freeipa-devel] [PATCH] 0018 - Simplify CSV escaping syntax

[Petr Viktorin]

This depends on my patch 0015.
Since CSV escaping was entirely broken before that patch (however we 
decide to fix the problem), let's also fix the escaping syntax itself, 
without worrying about backwards compatibility.

I tried to solve this according to Rob's comment on 
https://fedorahosted.org/freeipa/ticket/2227:
 > Whatever we come up with we need a more consistent way to handle
 > escape characters so it works the same on single and multi-value
 > attributes.

My goal is that it will just do the right thing for 99.9% of uses, and 
the 0.1% (or people who want to write robust scripts¹) should find a 
short, clear paragraph in the documentation.

Of course, values without backslashes, double quotes and newlines are 
again completely unaffected.



Commit message:

Instead of the non-obvious semantics of Python's CSV module, just split 
on commas that aren't escaped by a backslash.
Then, replace any commas that *are* escaped by backslashes by just 
commas, and remove initial whitespace as needed.


This simpler approach fits our use case better: most importantly, it 
doesn't require literal backslashes to be escaped, and doesn't "eat" 
backslashes (unless they precede a comma). This means the CSV multivalue 
format is, except for commas, the same as for single values.
It also does away with CSV's double-quoting syntax, making the format 
more predictable (=scriptable).

A drawback is that this format doesn't allow values that end with a 
backslash, unless they're given at the end. The workaround is to either 
give them at the end, or if more are needed,just use multiple options:
    --someopt='val1,val2\' --someopt='val3\'

Values that end with backslashes are so rare, this shouldn't be a 
problem in practice.


Also, update the tests.


Fixed as a side effect:
https://fedorahosted.org/freeipa/ticket/2402
https://fedorahosted.org/freeipa/ticket/2417

-- 
Petr³


---
¹ These should really use JSON/XMLRPC directly :)
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