Strings aren't quoted in pcbnew

[Ed Johns]

Application: pcbnew
Version: 4.0.5 release build
wxWidgets: Version 3.0.2 (debug,wchar_t,compiler with C++ ABI 1009,GCC 5.2.0,wx containers,compatible with 2.8)
Platform: Windows 8 (build 9200), 64-bit edition, 64 bit, Little endian, wxMSW
Boost version: 1.57.0
         USE_WX_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT=OFF
         USE_WX_OVERLAY=OFF
         KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
         KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
         KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
         USE_FP_LIB_TABLE=HARD_CODED_ON
         BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON

Noticed this when using git and pcbnew. Not sure if it is a bug or wishlist.

I set the date field to $Format:%cd$ so that when I archive from a repository, it will expand the string to the release date. Git expands the string to a date with spaces. These fields aren't quoted in the file because there are no spaces as saved. When I try to open the file in pcbnew, there is a parse error.

I was able to workaround by adding a trailing space to force quotation, but that may be unreliable if pcbnew ever removes trailing white-space.

I love working with the software, and like I said, there is a workaround, so do with this what you will.

Thanks.

-Ed

[Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw)]

I'm trying to understand what you mean by date field. Are you setting the date field in the kicad_pcb file header (the first line) or the title block date field or something else?

[Ed Johns (ejohns)]

Wayne,

I meant the date field in the title block. An example is $Format:cd$ with no quotes before git parsing changes to Tue Jan 10 05:56:54 2017 -0500. with spaces, but git doesn't automatically add quotes, which breaks pcbnew's read. A "simple change" could be to quote the strings even if no space is required, since quotes are escaped anyway.

And the "fix" for me ended up being changing $Format:cd$ to $Format:cd $ which forced pcbnew to quote the string anyway.

Thanks for following up.

-Ed

[Chris Pavlina (pavlina-chris)]

I know we've argued about this before and didn't come to an agreement, but honestly I agree. I know this isn't a use case we intend to support, but it is honestly just *weird* that we're deciding whether or not to quote strings based on whether they "need" it. It's error-prone and pointless.

[Nick Østergaard (nickoe)]

This quoting was breifly discussed on the list, yes, but didn't we agree that we would try to force quoting but still support reading non quoted files?

Or now that we have a file version mechanism, simply start removing that, but still keep the support for reading unquoted strings in older files.

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

If we already quote "when needed", then the parser already knows how to handle quotes and there's no backwards compatibility issue. Why not just quote them all?

[KiCad Janitor (kicad-janitor)]

Fixed in revision 4a9f82109a09209a9217f646bb571b9ba6252d95
https://git.launchpad.net/kicad/patch/?id=4a9f82109a09209a9217f646bb571b9ba6252d95