[ET Trac] [Einstein Toolkit] #1595: Is *) allowed as upper boundary for a parameter range?

[Einstein Toolkit]

#1595: Is *) allowed as upper boundary for a parameter range?
-----------------------+----------------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  eschnett  |       Owner:  sbrandt            
      Type:  defect    |      Status:  assigned           
  Priority:  minor     |   Milestone:  ET_2015_05         
 Component:  Cactus    |     Version:  development version
Resolution:            |    Keywords:  postrelease        
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Comment (by rhaas):

 Fine with me (as far as I know there is no existing code that breaks since
 the possibility to use  {{{[}}} was never documented and the only thorn
 that I know of doing so is private to Zelmani).

 In that case we need to add documentation that documents that {{{[}}} and
 {{{]}}} can be used (as alternatives to not using any type of brackets) to
 specify closed ranges to the user guide. Please note that already the user
 guide fails to mention that {{{(}}} and {{{)}}} are accepted for integer
 type ranges to provide exclusive ranges (where it is not required since
 one can always adjust the allowed range by one step).

 Steve's patch actually (as far as I understand the regex) makes the the
 perl script explicitly accept {{{[}}} which the C code will already
 interpret as a closed interval bound (see function
 {{{Util_DoubleInRange}}} in Misc.c).

 Allowing {{{(*}}} and {{{*)}}} (and {{{[*}}} and {{*]}}}) which would be
 equivalent to just {{{*}}} was already accepted in comment:6.

 We may still want to disallow using double quotes {{{"}}} in ranges for
 reals and integers. This would be similar to the changes introduced with
 the piraha based parser which did disallow "bare" strings (and only later
 re-introduced them for certain strings when it was found that a subset of
 users used those) and disallows quoted numbers. Allowing quotes when
 specifying ranges but disallowing them when specifying values in parfiles
 would be strange.

 The correct regex (the one in the perl script currently allows two round
 parens {{{((42:*}}} should be:
 {{{
 [(\[]?\s*($real|\*)\s*:\s*($real|\*)\s*[)\]]?
 }}}
 as well as
 {{{
 [\[]?$real[\]]?|[(\[]?\*[)\]]?
 }}}
 to allow any combination of number and star with an optional round/square
 bracket at either end or a single number of single star with a
 round/square brackets where sensible with any whitespace in between the
 elements.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.einsteintoolkit.org/ticket/1595#comment:15>
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