>> I thought about this briefly, and got about that far.. glad you got
>> further. :-) --[[Joey]]
->> Or, one could also refer to the language of [[!wikipedia description logics]]: their formulas actually define classes of objects through quantified relations to other classes. --Ivan Z.
+>> Or, one [[!taglink could_also_refer|pagespec_in_DL_style]] to the language of [[!wikipedia description logics]]: their formulas actually define classes of objects through quantified relations to other classes. --Ivan Z.
>
> Another option would be go with a more functional syntax. The concept here would
> be to allow a pagespec to appear in a 'pagespec function' anywhere a page can. e.g.
>> So, equivilant example: `define(bugs, bugs/* and !*/Discussion) and define(openbugs, bugs and !link(done)) and openbugs and !link(openbugs)`
>>
+
>> Re recursion, it is avoided.. but building a pagespec that is O(N^X) where N is the
>> number of pages in the wiki is not avoided. Probably need to add DOS prevention.
>> --[[Joey]]
I've lost track of the indent level, so I'm going back to not indented - I think this is a working [[patch]] taking into
account all comments above (which doesn't mean it is above reproach :) ). --[[Will]]
+> Very belated code review of last version of the patch:
+>
+> * `is_globlist` is no longer needed
+
+>> Good :)
+
+> * I don't understand why the pagespec match regexp is changed
+> from having flags `igx` to `ixgs`. Don't see why you
+> want `.` to match '\n` in it, and don't see any `.` in the regexp
+> anyway?
+
+>> Because you have to define all the named pagespecs in the pagespec, you sometimes end up with very long pagespecs. I found it useful to split them over multiple lines. That didn't work at one point and I added the 's' to make it work. I may have further altered the regex since then to make the 's' redundant. Remove it and see if multi-line pagespecs still work. :)
+
+> * Some changes of `@_` to `%params` in `pagespec_makeperl` do not
+> make sense to me. I don't see where \%params is defined and populated,
+> except with `\$params{specFunc}`.
+
+>> I'm not a perl hacker. This was a mighty battle for me to get going. There is probably some battlefield carnage from my early struggles learning perl left here.
+>> Part of this is that @_ / @params already existed as a way of passing in extra parameters. I didn't want to pollute that top level namespace - just at my own parameter (a hash) which contained the data I needed.
+
+> * Seems that the only reason `match_glob` has to check for `~` is
+> because when a named spec appears in a pagespec, it is translated
+> to `match_glob("~foo")`. If, instead, `pagespec_makeperl` checked
+> for named specs, it could convert them into `check_named_spec("foo")`
+> and avoid that ugliness.
+
+>> Yeah - I wanted to make named specs syntactically different on my first pass. You are right in that this could be made a fallback - named specs always override pagenames.
+
+> * The changes to `match_link` seem either unecessary, or incomplete.
+> Shouldn't it check for named specs and call
+> `check_named_spec_existential`?
+
+>> An earlier version did. Then I realised it wasn't actually needed in that case - match_link() already included a loop that was like a type of existential matching. Each time through the loop it would
+>> call match_glob(). match_glob() in turn will handle the named spec. I tested this version briefly and it seemed to work. I remember looking at this again later and wondering if I had mis-understood
+>> some of the logic in match_link(), which might mean there are cases where you would need an explicit call to check_named_spec_existential() - I never checked it properly after having that thought.
+
+> * Generally, the need to modify `match_*` functions so that they
+> check for and handle named pagespecs seems suboptimal, if
+> only because there might be others people may want to use named
+> pagespecs with. It would be possible to move this check
+> to `pagespec_makeperl`, by having it check if the parameter
+> passed to a pagespec function looked like a named pagespec.
+> The only issue is that some pagespec functions take a parameter
+> that is not a page name at all, and it could be weird
+> if such a parameter were accidentially interpreted as a named
+> pagespec. (But, that seems unlikely to happen.)
+
+>> Possibly. I'm not sure which I prefer between the current solution and that one. Each have advantages and disadvantages.
+>> It really isn't much code for the match functions to add a call to check_named_spec_existential().
+
+> * I need to check if your trick to avoid infinite recursion
+> works if there are two named specs that recursively
+> call one-another. I suspect it does, but will test this
+> myself..
+
+>> It worked for me. :)
+
+> --[[Joey]]
+
+>> There is one issue that I've been thinking about that I haven't raised anywhere (or checked myself), and that is how this all interacts with page dependencies.
+>> Firstly, I'm not sure anymore that the `pagespec_merge` function will continue to work in all cases. Secondly, it seems that there are two types of dependency, and ikiwiki
+>> currently only handles one of them. The first type is "Rebuild this page when any of these other pages changes" - ikiwiki handles this. The second type is "rebuild this page when
+>> set of pages referred to by this pagespec changes" - ikiwiki doesn't seem to handle this. I suspect that named pagespecs would make that second type of dependency more
+>> important. I'll try to come up with a good example. -- [[Will]]
+
+>>> Hrm, I was going to build an example of this with backlinks, but it looks like that is handled as a special case at the moment (line 458 of render.pm). I'll see if I can break
+>>> things another way. Fixing this properly would allow removal of that special case. -- [[Will]]
+
----
diff --git a/IkiWiki.pm b/IkiWiki.pm