I was playing around with std.conv.parse's mechanism for parsing
associative arrays from strings (cf.
http://dlang.org/phobos/std_conv.html#parse). A handy feature as
it would allow user-friendly input formats that can be
transformed into a D-array. However, the parser is very finicky
and expects the string to be exactly as if it were a hard-coded
D-array:
void main(string[] args) {
auto asso = "[\"key1\":\"value1\", \"key2\":\"value2\"]";
auto array = parse!(string[string], string)(asso);
foreach (k, v; array) {
writefln("%s : %s", k, v);
}
}
If you just write:
auto asso "[key1:value1, ...]";
i.e. withouth the quotes it says (dmd2.060):
std.conv.ConvException@.\..\..\src\phobos\std\conv.d(2973): Can't
parse string:
""" is missing
Couldn't the parser infer from string[string] that the key:value
pairs should be treated as strings, regardless of whether they
are quoted or not? Having to use quotes is not really
user-friendly, e.g. in a text file like this:
[
customer1 : Wellington Street,
customer2 : Mountain Road,
]
is easier to maintain than:
[
"customer1" : "Wellington Street",
"customer2" : "Mountain Road",
]
Or is there something I have overlooked?
