[dfv] backing out defaults_regexp_map?

[Mark S. <ma...@su...>]

I recently added 'defaults_regexp_map' to the development version, as
what I thought would be a logical complement to the other regexp
features we offer.

However, once I actually tried to use it, I'm not sure it actually makes
sense, and am considering backing it out now.

Here's the rub:

There's no point in declaring defaults as a regular expression unless
the corresponding optional and/or required fields are also given as a
regular expression. Otherwise, the data structure could be used to
generate both parts of the profile.

However, setting defaults is about dealing with fields that don't exist,
by looking at which ones we know would be required or optional.

The problem is, when we hope to use optional_regexp and
defaults_regexp_map with the same field, the default doesn't set if the
field is missing. That's because the field can't be optional_regexp
(there's nothing to match!). And thus, because we don't know that the
field should be optional, we can't set a default with defaults_regexp_map.

Considering that, is there is some other "use case" where
defaults_regexp_map would actually be useful? It would be a scenerio
where somehow you need the optional and/or required field definitions to
be hardcoded, but the defaults to be generated on the fly.

   Mark

-- 
http://mark.stosberg.com/