Leading/trailing newlines

Prompted by CJ's mention of stripping out redundant whitespace I 
thought I'd revisit the subject.

I note the two tickets on the todo list (405, 459).

I'd like to suggest a potential solution.

If line 1219 of Request.pm (1.37) was changed like so:

-my $stack_buffer = $comp->{has_filter} ? \$filter_buffer : $top_buffer;
+my $stack_buffer =\$filter_buffer;

this would then allow something like this (assuming the existence of 
a configuration parameter filter_newlines) to be added after line 1280

>>>
else {
         if ($self->{interp}->{filter_newlines}) {
                 $filter_buffer =~ s/^\n+//;
                 $filter_buffer =~ s/\n+$//;
         }
         $$top_buffer .= $filter_buffer;
     }
<<<

which would soak up all leading and trailing whitespace on components 
without explicit filters which would take precedence. So to not 
remove the space would simply require adding an empty filter block


Although that would perhaps do, I'd like to suggest that the 
configuration parameter shouldn't be a simple on/off toggle, but 
allow the following options (with 'none' the default for backwards 
compatibility)

    filter_newlines => none | one | all

And allow for component flags block to have the same parameter with 
the same possible values to allow for overriding on a component by 
component basis.

This would allow for something like:

>>>
my $filter_newlines = $comp->{flags}->{filter_newlines} || 
$self->{interp}->{filter_newlines};

if ($filter_newlines and $filter_newlines ne 'none') {
     my $lines_to_filter = $filter_newlines eq 'all' ? '' : '1';
     $filter_buffer =~ s/^\n{1,$lines_to_filter}//;
     $filter_buffer =~ s/\n{1,$lines_to_filter}$//;
}

$$top_buffer .= $filter_buffer;
<<<

If done this way, this could be done in addition to any filter the 
component actually has. Or again, the filter could be used to 
override the auto stripping entirely.



Thoughts?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft
Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/