Re: [libsmi] preserving comments

30 May 2002


      HI Mark,
In SMICng, I have a flag to "capture" comments. Its been in there for
many years. However, the hard part is associating the comments with
the proper item(s). How to do this varies with the style of writing
comments. For example, one of the reasons for capturing comments
is to get the description of enumerated values, such as
   SYNTAX INTEGER {
             a(1),    -- when condition a
             b(2),    -- when condition b
             c(3),    -- when condition c
             d(4)     -- when condition d
             }
As shown above, this is the simple and easy case. Here is another
example:
   SYNTAX INTEGER {
             -- values that can only be written
             a(1),    -- when condition a
             b(2),    -- when condition b
             -- values that can only be read
             c(3),    -- when condition c
             -- values that can be written and read
             d(4)     -- when condition d
             }
And how do you write comments that are over multiple lines? For
example:
   SYNTAX INTEGER {
                      -- when condition a, and blah, blah, blah
             a(1),    -- more about a, blah, blah
-- or this way
             b(2)    -- when condition b, and blah, blah, blah
                      -- more about b, blah, blah
             }
Many years ago, I made several proposals to extend the syntax of
MIB modules to capture more of text that is associated with
different parts. They were not well received because of the
additional work that would be needed to MIB modules. For example:
   SYNTAX ENUM {
             WRITE-ONLY {
               VALUE a(1)
                 DESCRIPTION "when condition a",
               VALUE b(2)
                 DESCRIPTION "when condition b" }
             READ-ONLY {
               VALUE c(3)
                 DESCRIPTION "when condition c" }
             READ-WRITE {
               VALUE d(4)
                 DESCRIPTION "when condition d" }
             }
And by the way on SMICng, yes, it can save the comments, but doesn't
do anything with them yet (other than print them out, if requested).
At 11:57 PM 5/29/2002 +0200, Mark Kaplun wrote:
...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Strauss" strauss@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de
To: "Mark Kaplun" markk5@bezeqint.net
Cc: libsmi@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de
Sent: Saturday, May 25, 2002 2:48 PM
Subject: Re: [libsmi] preserving comments
[snip part which should be disccused at IETF WG]
...
Mark> The way I see libsmi, it is a generic tool to compile MIB files
Mark> to other formats/langauges, therefor I don't see the point of
Mark> limiting the generated format to "formats which do not contain
Mark> comment information".
I agree. But I think, that's not the point.
This is realy my only point. I will leave the IETF to worry about whether
comments are needed at all, and how to standertise the data in the
descriptions, but while they are here and people are adding comments to MIB
files, I think that libsmi should to something with them and not just ignore
the text contained in them.
I would gladly contribute some time for adding comment support to libsmi,
but the last time I have done any YACC/LEX coding was sometime at the
prehistoric times. so I will require help at that aspect. If there is anyone
who feels it is a worthy cuase and have some YACC experience he can contact
me.
Mark.
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Regards,
/david t. perkins

Re: [libsmi] preserving comments

David T. Perkins