+However, it would be natural to want to use $1 etc in the found-string; this
+would be hard because of the lookup caching (if repeated, the lookup won't
+actually be done and therefore the numerical variables won't be set), and in
+any case, even without caching (and it could, I suppose, be disabled for this
+lookup) those variables are not in the right storage pool even if they were
+preserved after the lookup.
+
+An alternative approach might be to implement something like this:
+
+ ${scanfile{/some/file}{sub-expression}}
+
+where the sub-expression is expanded for every line in the file, with each line
+in turn being put into $value. This is like a conditional ${readfile, and in
+fact ${readfile could be written using ${scanfile. It would be nice to find a
+way of stopping the scan once something has happened. The only thing I can
+think of is to invent a variable that changes when scanning a line generates
+some non-null text, and then always to stop on a forced failure. That would
+allow expressions like this:
+
+ ${scanfile{/some/file}
+ {
+ ${if eq{$generated}{}{${if match{regex}{$value}{something}}} fail}
+ }}
+
+It's all rather clumsy. Once a line has matched and generated some text, the
+next iteration would stop the scan. Another thought: maybe use $scanline
+instead of $value (to save confusion) and have $scantext containing everything
+that's been generated so far. That sounds pretty flexible.
git://git.exim.org / exim.git / blobdiff