ASTArrayAccess messes up on fallback to JexlContext
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                 Key: JEXL-26
                 URL: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/JEXL-26
             Project: Commons JEXL
          Issue Type: Bug
    Affects Versions: 1.1
         Environment: N/A
            Reporter: Colin Lear


When executing an expression if a null comes up (unresolved object) it attempts 
to build an identifier to query the JexlContext directly. However it only works 
on sequential ASTIdentifier nodes. If there is another sort of node then it 
ends up searching the JexlContext for a mangled or malformed variable.

I think this is a bug because subobjects with properties or methods that are 
null can "inherit" the value of objects or properties in the base JexlContext 
scope. It's too unpredictable to be a legitimate feature.

for example in the expression: objects[23].status

if (objects[23] != null && objects[23].status == null) then it will search for 
the bare expression "status" in the JexlContext. Ideally it would query the 
JexlContext map for the full expression, however the details of that are 
difficult to implement and can produce odd results.

Even worse with an expression like: base.objects[23].status.
if (base != null && base.objects[23] != null && base.objects[23].status == 
null) then this expression will evaluate look for "base.status" in the 
JexlContext map.

It currently works as expected for expressions like base.object.status by 
searching for "base.object.status" in the JexlContext if status is null. 
Although I'm not entirely convinced that it is a good idea to do this.

Simple Fix:

in ASTReference.java change the function getIdentifierToDepth() to return an 
empty string if there are non ASTIdentifier Nodes in the expression (in my case 
it's ASTArrayAccess nodes). This is the simplest solution and stops subobjects 
effectively assuming values of objects in the base JexlContext while still 
allowing you to bind objects into the JexlContext with identifiers with "." in 
the name.

So you could add "object.tracking.status" directly into the JexlContext and it 
would work. However you couldn't add object.tracking[23].status because one of 
the Nodes is an ArrayAccess node and it can't be translated back into a string 
by the current implementation.

/* patched function */

    private String getIdentifierToDepth(int i) {
        StringBuffer varName = new StringBuffer();
        for (int j = 0; j <= i; j++) {
            SimpleNode node = (SimpleNode) jjtGetChild(j);
            if (node instanceof ASTIdentifier) {
                varName.append(((ASTIdentifier) node).getIdentifierString());
                if (j != i) {
                    varName.append('.');
                }
            } else {
                /* expression is unresolvable and variable name is invalid */
                return "";
            }
        }
        return varName.toString();
    }

You could always add some code to support ASTArrayAccess nodes. However you'd 
also have to support either evaluating, or reducing to a string, the index 
expression. Which is messy.

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