Provide method of escaping values containing lookup identifiers

[mdeltito]

This is an edge case (and there are ways around it) but consider the following example of a value that starts with a #:

function myAction(opts) {
  return this.lookup(opts)
}

chain
  .myAction({
    id: '!random'
  , color: '#cccccc' 
  })

A couple of options offhand would be:

• Introduce a control character to escape e.g. \#foo, \!bar
• Provide a built-in function that just reflects the value e.g. !literal("#ccc")
  • At minimum this is a viable workaround, since quoted function arguments do not pass through lookup

[esatterwhite]

I like the control character from a usability perspective. but would probably need to be added to the parser

[esatterwhite]

was poking at this a bit. The parser has the concept of modes which define a set of valid tokens that can be lexed.
The tricky bit with that is that tokens defines the start and end char for that mode.

We do this in a round about way with the String token - anything between quotes.

The simple case of an escape char would need a closing char if we wanted to use the high level API

createToken({
  name: 'escapestart'
, pattern: /\/-/
, push_mode: 'literal'
})

createToken({
  name: 'escapestop'
, pattern: /-\//
, pop_mode: 'literal'
})

defaults = {
  color: '\#cccccc\'
}

At this point, its not much better than quoting it

defaults = {
  color: '"#cccccc"'
}

The idea of a literal function is interesting, but thats an even longer way of quoting (our current literal mechanism)

defaults = {
  color: '!literal:#cccccc'
}

class Chain {
  $literal(value) {
    if (value == null) return ''
    return `"${value}"`
  }
}

Another thing to consider is where the sane logical boundaries. Can the escape character be used anywhere?

!fn(\#cccccc, foo, \!bar)

[esatterwhite]

or rather than a parsing problem maybe its just a logical lookup problem

class Chain {
  lookup(value) {
    if (typeOf(value) === 'string' && value.startsWith('\\')) {
      return value.replace('\\', '')
    }
  }
}

[mdeltito]

@esatterwhite I took a brief look at this as well, and that's sort of where I landed too

https://github.com/logdna/setup-chain-node/compare/mdeltito/issue-14?expand=1#diff-36d58ae41c10a07cafe494d25b0180f2eb3fec642bfb63feced95e2b012b5196R117-R119

The escape char is included in the tokens there, but it doesn't need to be. Moving it to strictly a lookup concern might solve the remaining test case too.

[esatterwhite]

Actually I think we could define this as a subrule.

• [escape]<lookup>
• [escape]<fn>

Then the escape is a child of the lookup fn.

if (fn.children[0].escape) {
  return this.wrapLiteral(fn.children.slice(1))
}