The current parser handles metadata annotations
'@' *Identifier* '(' *Text* ')'
so that the annotations for one entity (e.g., a rule) are available as a
Map<String,Object>, where the key is given by the *Identifier *and the value
of the entry is available according to
*if* *Text* can be *completely* parsed as *Identifier* '='
*Expression*(where
*Expression* is whatever the DRL parser accepts as an expression, i.e., an
extended subset of Java expressions)
*then*
the value is a Map<String,String>
*else
the *value is a String, with trimmed leading and trailing white space,
but preserving all embedded white space
Changes compared to 5.1.1:
- no Map was ever returned in 5.1.1,
- @m( "foo" ) in 5.1.1. returned "foo", but 5.2.0 returns
"\"foo\"".
- @m( "foo", "bar" ) in 5.1.1. returned "foo\",
\"bar", but 5.2.0 returns
"\"foo\", \"bar\""
- comments between "@...(" and ")" are now handled consistently but
were
not in 5.1.1
Possibly considered a problem for 5.2.0 or later:
- No check is made for duplicate "outer" map keys; entries are overwritten.
- Repeated "inner" map keys produce concatenated entries, e.g. @m( k = 1, k
= "a" ) returns "1a" as the value for key "k".
- Returning (arbitrary) expressions, unchanged, as String now may cause
incompatibilitie with more sophisticated processing (if this ever should be
considered).
-W