[asterisk-users] extensions.conf strangeness

[Brian Candler]

On Sun, Oct 01, 2006 at 03:55:45PM +0100, Marco Mouta wrote:
> 
>    [invalid]
>    > exten => _X!,1,Answer()
>    > exten => _X!,2,Background(pbx-invalid)
>    Are you sure that your invalid context is correctly written?
>    I've never heard about this pattern match _X!
>    As far as i know the wild card is the "."
>    So your invalid context should be:
>    [invalid]
>    exten => _X.,1,Answer()
>    exten => _X.,2,Background(pbx-invalid)
>    This may be the cause....

_X! means "match the pattern as soon as it possibly could". If you use _X.
then a timeout has to take place to see whether some other pattern might
match.

But your explanation still doesn't go into why it works differently in one
context than another. I guess I'm going to have to assume that Asterisk
dialplans are non-deterministic :-(

Are there any debug tools which can show the "thought process" as a
dial-plan is processed - for example, what patterns are tried and in what
order?

Thanks,

Brian.