development suggestion

[Stephen Lime]

I think you will see some change in how expressions are handled. For example,
we might require /'s around expressions to signal the use of regex. Expressions
not using that would be evalulated using strcmp or strcasecmp. May add the logical
expression support suggested by Rob in a previous thread. This would also speed
things up- why use regex with simple, exact paterns. More thinking is needed on
this topic.

s.

Stephen Lime
Internet Applications Analyst

Minnesota DNR
500 Lafayette Road
St. Paul, MN 55155
651-297-2937

>>> "Grzegorz Myrda" <mapadm at polsl.gliwice.pl> 11/09/99 09:09AM >>>
I think an option allowing to give not only _exact_ values in item/value
pairing while item(n)query would be useful.
Present possibilities are very powerful but not always "user friendly" ;-)

For example to find an object on the map by its name, user could give only
substring of the "proper" name (from *.dbf) and MapServer would add all
needed special characters (for example  "( |^)" at the begining and
.*( |$)"at the end, and replace all spaces by "( |$)|( |^)").

It can exist as an option in mapfile's query object.
When checked - querying as above, no check - exact querying. Or this
parameter can be set to one of more sophisticated kinds of querying to
support different types of fields and its values and expected results.

Grzegorz