Bug 97283 - consider using something other than "[" and "]" for delimiters in the new TestExpectations syntax
Summary: consider using something other than "[" and "]" for delimiters in the new Tes...
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: WebKit
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Tools / Tests (show other bugs)
Version: 528+ (Nightly build)
Hardware: Unspecified Unspecified
: P2 Normal
Assignee: Nobody
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2012-09-20 19:20 PDT by Dirk Pranke
Modified: 2012-09-24 14:27 PDT (History)
11 users (show)

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Description Dirk Pranke 2012-09-20 19:20:53 PDT 
Much as I hate to reopen this kettle of fish, I'm starting to think we should use something other than "[" and "]" as the delimiters in the new syntax. When people read the documentation, they've had that notation beaten into them by EBNF to think that that indicates that they are optional. Given that the enclosed sections are optional, this is pretty confusing.

i.e., 

webkit.org/b/12345 [ Debug ] foo.html [ Failure ]

it's easy to see that in docs and think that you don't need to type in the "[" and "]" on the line. 

Perhaps we should switch to something else? On the other hand, people will get the idea pretty quickly so perhaps it's not worth changing?
Comment 1 Ryosuke Niwa 2012-09-20 19:30:03 PDT 
I'm fine with using () or {}. Avoid <> to be easily mixed with HTML. But I don't think people will mistake [] as BNF notation.
Comment 2 Dirk Pranke 2012-09-20 19:39:35 PDT 
(In reply to comment #1)
> I don't think people will mistake [] as BNF notation.

People already have :)
Comment 3 Dirk Pranke 2012-09-24 14:27:27 PDT 
Given that no one has chimed in on this besides rniwa, who seemed to think that [] was fine, I'm going to let this dog sleep.