[LDAPsh-devel] FW: ldapsh new features and suggestions

[Rafael C. <Raf...@li...>]

Here is the mail James sent to me on january with its patches.
Rafael

-----Original Message-----
From: James Devenish [mailto:j-d...@us...]=20
Sent: dimanche, 26. janvier 2003 12:01
To: rco...@us...
Subject: ldapsh new features and suggestions


Hi,

I recently discovered your ldapsh programme, hosted at SourceForge. It's
"the answer to my prayers". But as a non Perl-brained person, I tend to
struggle a bit with some software. I have the following suggestions that
might make ldapsh a little more amenable to people who are not Perl
enthusiasts. Please note that my Perl skills are minimal, so these may
need refactoring.

(1) Use the values of the $VISUAL or $EDITOR environment variables
instead of requiring the user to add anything to his or her .ldapshrc
(patch attached as ldapsh_1_editor). I also made a correction to a
little typo in the docs. These variables are commonly used by other
programmes (both BSD and SysV) so some users will have these set in
their environment and expect them to be picked up.

(2) I have a problem with GNU Readline on SOME/ALL platforms whereby
your _resetTermReadline method causes echoing of the last-entered line.
In the case that a password had just been entered, the echo includes the
password in the clear. I have attached a patch (ldapsh_2_reset) in which
the two "offending" lines are commented out (presumably leaving the
function somewhat ineffectual). I don't know the solution to this but
thought I should point it out.

(3) I often wish to dump/list the entry whose DN is the current DN. For
familiarity with regular 'ls' syntax, I have made a patch
(ldapsh_3_dot) in which your <expansion> can now understand the full
stop "." as meaning "the current DN" (or, more accurately, the search
scope "base" rather than "sub" or "one"). I also added something to your
regex so that a bare . gets quoted. This means "ls ." and "cat ." do
something that I want.

(4) I updated cd/pushd so that they can accept zero arguments gracefully
(ldapsh_4_cd). cd will simply do nothing and pushd will, in effect, push
the current directory. I updted the docs to reflect this.

(5) I altered the main loop (see ldapsh_5_main) so that the user can
usefully specify command-line arguments with ldapsh. That is, I can
invoke `ldapsh profile_name` as a shortcut to invoking `ldapsh` and then
entering 'profile_name' at the prompt. =20

(6) Added support (via ldapsh_6_edit) for three new commands: add,
replace, delete. This are just shortcuts for the 'apply'-style
manipulation of Net::LDAP::Entry. Though less powerful than 'apply', I
think they are easier for general users.

The patches are against CVS HEAD and will patch cleanly if applied in
the order that I have listed them (though you can easily skip #2).

Regards,
James.