Using dots in property configuration names

[doojonio]

Hi, I am using property configuration. And now I need to use dots in names for some fields. For example:

JsonLayout.field.browser.name = Firefox

In this case I want to get field like that:

field->{'browser.name'} == 'Firefox'

So I propose to use some char sequence as dot. For example if we gonna use '~1' char sequence as dot, than configuration, which will look like this:

JsonLayout.field.browser~1name = Firefox

And field hash will look like this:

field->{'browser.name'} == 'Firefox'

Can we do this? I can create pull request for this, if you like this idea

[mohawk2]

I think you'd be able to have this right now with the code as it is, if you just use e.g. _ to be your escape character, with __ as literal underscore, then _1A3_ be the hexadecimal escape "1A3"? (and obviously decode that where you need to do so)

[mkende]

While support could be added in each client library that needs it, I believe the syntax would be nicer if it was supported right away in Log::Log4perl::Config::PropertyConfigurator. For example this would allow to write something like (using the same example as in the initial request):

JsonLayout.field.browser\.name = Firefox
# or, with an alternative syntax
JsonLayout.field."browser.name" = Firefox

Of course this change in supported syntax would be risky so it would need to be protected behind some kind of flag, but this would solve this issue for everybody once and for all.

For reference, I’m also here because of the JsonLayout module with which I’m trying to write Google Cloud Structured Logging messages.