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 Message 1263 
 Kees van Eeten to Andrew Leary 
 feature request 
 02 Oct 14 23:49:22 
 
Hello Andrew!

02 Oct 14 14:10, you wrote to Michiel van der Vlist:

 AL> I just dug through the code.  Currently leading or trailing spaces in the
 AL> first 7 fields (keyword, number, name, location, sysop, telephone,
 AL> baudrate) of a nodelist line will be removed.  The issue here is an
 AL> incorrect entry with a space embedded in the flags field.  MakeNL has
 AL> never done error checking on the flags, which is why ERRFLAGS was
 AL> developed in the first place.  I suppose I could add basic error checking
 AL> of the flags (probably limited to flagging illegal characters such as
 AL> spaces.)  Anything more extensive would probably involve rewriting
 AL> ERRFLAGS in C and merging it with MakeNL.  That is a project that would
 AL> require extensive amounts of time to code, test, and debug.  Given that
 AL> some of the current ZCs refuse to use ERRFLAGS, I don't imagine they would
 AL> want to have the equivalent added to MakeNL.

 I can agree with your agument. Considering the frequency of this error
 ocurring, we should probably leave it as it is. And those who care can use
 ERRFLAGS. Personally I think it would be an asset to makenl. The program
 performs a basic set of errors, that should not occur and have to be repaired
 anyway. All other checks are added via the configuration file.

 As for the unwillingness to use ERRFLAGS, I can only guess.
 I can think of some reasons. The main being that at first sight the
 configuration file, was tailored to the likes of one ZC and that configuration
 was more strickt than what other ZC allowed in their segments. Running the
 program produced many error messages on Zone accepted notations.

 If ERRFLAGS had been introduced with a very forgiving configuration file, it
would probably have had a better chance.

 As a last the ERRFLAGS probanly suffered from the not invented here syndrome,
 or the initiative to its development was taken by the wrong person.
 I am not going into that argument.

Kees

--- FPD v2.9.040207  GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5
 * Origin: As for me, all I know is that, I know nothing. (2:280/5003.4)

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