| From: | ghudson@mit.edu |
| Date: | Fri, 12 Apr 2024 16:57:12 -0400 |
| To: | rt@kerborg-prod-app-1.mit.edu |
| Subject: | profile final flag limitations |
The profile library supports setting the final flag on a node by placing a "*" character after the tag part of an assignment or after a close bracket (for a section) or a brace (for a subsection). The general idea is to ignore further assignments to the section, subsection, or relation. There are two important limitations of the final flag implementation which render it minimally useful:
1. It is only checked when deciding whether to proceed from one file data object to the next during node iteration. It does not suppress further assignments within the same profile file, or within files included via "include" or "includedir" directives.
2. Although there is support for setting the flag on relations, it has no effect there; it only works on sections and subsections.
Additionally, there is no way to set the final flag via the profile write APIs (profile_add_relation() etc.), only via parsing. This may not matter in some ideal interpretations of the profile model, as write operations could be taken to apply strictly post-parsing. It does matter if profile writes continue to affect only the first file in a multi-file profile, or if we add the ability to compose profiles.
1. It is only checked when deciding whether to proceed from one file data object to the next during node iteration. It does not suppress further assignments within the same profile file, or within files included via "include" or "includedir" directives.
2. Although there is support for setting the flag on relations, it has no effect there; it only works on sections and subsections.
Additionally, there is no way to set the final flag via the profile write APIs (profile_add_relation() etc.), only via parsing. This may not matter in some ideal interpretations of the profile model, as write operations could be taken to apply strictly post-parsing. It does matter if profile writes continue to affect only the first file in a multi-file profile, or if we add the ability to compose profiles.