Improve UX around MSON reserved characters

[kylef]

There have been many issues reported by users who have forgotten to escape reserved characters. This even catches people working on the parser for MSON itself https://github.com/apiaryio/snowcrash/issues/338 (myself included).

We should find a way to improve the experience around this, either with improved warnings in the parser (snowcrash) or improved MSON documentation making this clearer.

[honzajavorek]

:+1: On Jun 10, 2015 7:17 PM, "Kyle Fuller" [email protected] wrote:

There have been many issues reported by users who have forgotten to escape reserved characters. This even catches people working on the parser for MSON itself #338 (myself included).

We should find a way to improve the experience around this, either with improved warnings in the parser (snowcrash) or improved MSON documentation making this clearer.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/apiaryio/api-blueprint/issues/210.

[Almad]

:+1:

[zdne]

:+1:

[kylef]

If anyone has any suggestions on how to improve the experience around the reserved characters please let me know.

[Almad]

@kylef how does actually currently parser decides when the attribute name ends?

[pksunkara]

When it sees a colon or a hyphen or an open parentheses.

[Almad]

@pksunkara I don't think that's entirely true given underscores can break it as well.

[pksunkara]

Underscore doesn't stop the parsing, it searches for the second underscore and treats the whole thing as a markdown italic.

+ name_a: b gives name_a + name_a_: b gives name_a_ + name_a: b_ gives name_a: b_ which is probably not the users' intention.

[Almad]

@pksunkara so Markdown parsing happens before structural parsing?

[pksunkara]

Yes. It's also related to Variable Property Name a bit. If you look at the example there, you can see why I want to give preference to _ & *.