On 3/21/2010 7:16 PM, Dan Poirier wrote: > On 2010-03-21 at 16:14, "William A. Rowe Jr." <[email protected]> wrote: > >> No-match of a wildcard must result in an error. > > Why? It doesn't before this change. E.g. > > Include /existingdirectory/nosuchfile*.conf > > starts without error, and that seems fine to me - the directive says to > include all files matching that pattern, and all zero files that match > are indeed included.
It does not seem fine to perpetuate this approach, in that it results in far more lost troubleshooting hours and stupid users/support questions than it gains. I suggest nothing is gained, that a placeholder file couldn't accomplish. The existing behavior of your example is much easier to debug and catch the config error than the new feature introduces, which adds typos or spelling errors to the directory path, or the miscount of directory depth, etc, etc. A prerequisite of putting an out an empty that matches the pattern doesn't seem onerous, is it? It forces the administrator to be deliberate in their configuration, to complete that configuration with an explict new file. Otherwise, Include conf/nothere.conf should be allowed; after all they might want to move this file out of the way without causing an error. But that would be a foolish feature, as is permitting no files to match a wildcard.
