[pmwiki-users] preg_replace (RFC)

[Hans Bracker]

Thursday, December 4, 2014, 12:37:26 AM, Philippe wrote:

>> I vote for option 3.
>> It is easy to understand and troubleshoot the problem.

> I'm really sorry, but it is not "easy to understand and
> troubleshoot the problem". I have been using PmWiki for many years,
> but I'm not a PHP Guru, and if it was that easy, it would have been
> fixed for all recipes in a wink. Please don't expect every "simple"
> user of PmWiki to have an in-depth knowledge of PHP and PmWiki
> itself. PmWiki is very user friendly in particular because it does not expect those.

I  think  you are right. It should not be expected for a site admin to
fix  the  problems introduced by the update to PHP 5.5, which was most
likely not done by her/him anyway. To be able to identify which recipe
scripts or skins are generating these error messages would be nice.
Partly PHP does this and points to the script and code line involved.
An  admin  should  hopefully  be  able  to  see by this what recipe is
involved, and check if there is an updated PHP 5.5 compatible version
available.  Otherwise contact the recipe author or mention the problem
here on  the user list, where someone else may be able to help to fix
the  recipe.  I  have  been  relying on such error feedback from users
about scripts I authored or co-authored.

But  there  are  many PHP error messages pointing to pmwiki.php, which
are  not  caused  by  pmwiki code directly, but by use of the Markup()
function  in  recipes  and  skins using the /e modifier in the regular
expression. I think Petko did a good job adding a PmWiki error message
in  such cases, which identifies the offending regular expression. But
how  can  a  site  admin  work out in which recipe or skin script this
regular  expression  pattern  is?  Because  that is not clear from the
error message. A Markup() call with /e modifier could be anywhere, and
an  admin would not know, unless s/he has a good idea about the scripts
involved  and the regular expressions. One could make a text search on
all  cookbook  and  skin  scripts for the offending regular expression
pattern,  I  guess.  So  this is not an easy way to identify offending
code  and scripts. Still Petko provided a handle and I am grateful for
that!

Could  PmWiki  be more specific to identify in which function call and
script offending regular expressions reside? I don't see how.

So  my  vote  is  for option 3 (do nothing, although Petko has already
done  a  lot to help flag the problems ). But in the end we might need
to  think about issuing warnings in the cookbook about the scripts and
skins  which are not PHP 5.5 compatible. Maybe they can all b searched
for  regular  expressions  with  /e modifiers? But that does not sound
easy   either.   And  sometimes  RE  patterns  with  /e  modifier were
created,  which  do  not  appear  inside  a  call  to  preg_replace or
preg_match  etc.  Finding all these is difficult. Fixing them may prove
difficult as well.


Best regards,
 Hans                         
mailto:design at softflow.co.uk
www.softflow.co.uk