#1706 Can't use literal \. in domain blocking?

[Stefan Fröberg]

Hi.

Why is privoxy ignoring literal . (aka .) character when trying to block whole domain in user.action file?

For example:

{ +block }
www.taloussanomat.fi

does not work for http://www.taloussanomat.fi/sivu.php?page_id=1?

[Fabian Keil]

In traditional host patterns (which are used by default) the dot
is a delimiter character:
http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/actions-file.html#HOST-PATTERN

"Escaping" it is neither necessary nor supported.

If you configure with --enable-extended-host-patterns, Privoxy
will use PCRE for host patterns as well in which case the dot
is no longer a delimiter and "." can be used to match the
literal dot.

[Stefan Fröberg]

Thank you. I will then build privoxy with that switch. I have a huge blocklist with \. characters that I use with other software, like squid too.

One more thing: I tried cross-compiling latest privoxy from fedora to windows (mingw).
I also cross-compiled zlib and pcre dll's for it too. I then tried the privoxy.exe and it gives me
"can't load actions file .\default.action: line 641: cannot create URL or TAG pattern from: .ad???*"

Could it be because my cross-compiled pcre dll that is somehow screwed?
(I compiled it with JIT support enabled if it matters)

[Fabian Keil]

This probably has nothing to do with cross compilation.

"ad???*" is not a valid pcre pattern.

You can use url-pattern-translator.pl to convert action files from
"traditional host pattern" to "extended host pattern" syntax:
http://ijbswa.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ijbswa/current/tools/url-pattern-translator.pl?view=markup

Note that transformation in the other direction is not supported.

P.S.: Please don't use the "edit post" feature for essential edits as
they don't result in email notifications.

[Stefan Fröberg]

Thank you! It now works perfectly with my blocklist
http://185.82.200.39/blocklist.txt