[Users] Re: [Devel] avpops updates

[Dan Pascu]

On Friday 10 February 2006 21:44, Daniel-Constantin Mierla wrote:
>     - $avp($aliasid) - refers to the avp defined by avp alias 'aliasid'
>     -$avp($pvar) refers to the avp having the name the value of $pvar

These 2 seem to conflict with each other. They look exactly the same but 
claim to yield different results. The first is a direct access of the 
value of the alias, while the second is an indirect access of the value 
of the avp which's name is taken from $pvar. This is _very_ confusing.

The problem comes from the fact that avp aliases and pseudo variables use 
the same notation but are handled so differently by $avp().

I think the best way to address this is to solve the issue at its source.

What I have in mind is to use $something for pseudo variables like before 
but unify the avp and avp alias notation, since an avp alias is just 
another name for an existing avp. Thus we can have these:

$avp(i:nnn)        - integer avp
$avp(s:some_name)  - string avp with name 'some_name'
$avp(some_name)    - if some_name is defined as an avp alias, use the avp 
                     pointed by that alias, else lookup the string avp 
                     with the name 'some_name'

In short, anything not having a i: or s: in front of it should be first 
looked up as an avp alias, but if that alias is not defined it should be 
considered as the name of the string avp.

This will make avp aliases have priority over string aliases, but I think 
that's fine. And this is much more clear (both by eliminating the 
confusion with pseudo variables and by unifying aliases with avps 
notation wise). Backward compatibility is preserved, in the sense that if 
some_name is not defined as an alias it's still looked up as an string 
avp as it was before.

-- 
Dan