[Asterisk-Dev] Dialplan syntax changes.. Option: work on a radically different design..

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Wednesday 18 May 2005 11:15, Dave Weis wrote:
> On Wed, 18 May 2005 alex at pilosoft.com wrote:
> > On Wed, 18 May 2005, Brian West wrote:
> >>> What is the dialplan?  It's really a procedural language, it
> >>> seems. Do we already have well defined syntax(es) that would fit?
> >>> Sure we do -- and most of them stem from the syntax of C in one
> >>> way or another.
> >>> So, can it make sense to make the Dialplan look more like C?
> >
> > Finally someone who has enough sanity to recognize that line-based
> > programming languages died away with ol' GWBASIC and FORTRAN-1945
> >
> > I'm for it with both hands.
> > Now, let's discuss the BNF of the new language. Also, discuss
> > whether we need gotos, etc, etc - and whether possibly adoption of
> > another existing "domain specific language" would be preferable to
> > rolling our own, writing parsers and syntax/semantic analyzer,
> > variable/array/etc support code - which needs to be debugged etc.
> > Very boring stuff.
>
> I think we should go for a slightly higher layer of functionality
> when in the distributed tarball. It's silly that people are still
> rewriting call forward and extension macros. I would like to have one
> or two "personalities" shipped with * based on the dial plan syntax,
> whatever it ends up being.
>
> With this users will get something closer to a predefined kit of
> parts when they want to build something instead of an entire hardware
> store.

I think most of us want to continue to have the equivalent of the entire
hardware store, not "You have black boxes A-E, and if you can't do what
you want to do with one of those black boxes, well, then, you shouldn't
be doing that anyway."

-- 
Tilghman