Dieter Maurer writes:
The existing "quote features" name the context for which quoting is needed. The context determines what needs to be quoted and how quoting has to be done. Your proposal does not state the context but only the how. Otherwise, I would think such an extension would be good.
You are right here. I just came up with "slash_quote" off the top of my head. "string_quote" is a good language-neutral name I think that is similar in spirit to the present format options.
Thus, I propose:
1. new quoting directive "string_quote" quoting Python strings i.e. ", ' and \ are quoted. This would work for Javascript (and other languages with C-like quotation and string literals), too.
2. all auxiliary functions for DTML tags, especially quoting, should be available via the namespace.
To avaid namespace pollution, they may go into a separate module, say 'aux'. E.g. I would like to use quoting, formatting etc. inside DTML embedded Python expressions in a form like that:
<dtml-var "... _.aux.fmt(x,'%m/%d/%Y')..."> and <dtml-var ".... _.aux.sql_quote(x)...">
This idea has merit, and extends the usefulness of these options to parts of an expression rather than just the whole thing. I think calling the module 'aux' might not be the best for code readability sake though. Perhaps it should just be called fmt or format. Perhaps like so: <dtml-var "... _.fmt.expr(x, '%.2f') ..."> and <dtml-var "... _.fmt.string_quote(x) ..."> newbie format methods could be added too (Feature creep alert!) like: <dtml-var "... _.fmt.currency(x) ..."> in place of the first one.