Multi-line torrc options conflict with Windows paths

[karsten]

I set up a relay on Windows with these two lines as the first lines in my torrc:

DataDirectory C:\Users\karsten\tor\
Log notice file notice.log

Guess what happens? My DataDirectory is now in "C:\Users\karsten\torLog notice file notice.log" and I don't have a log file.

While this makes sense to me now, I was quite surprised. Not sure if there's an easy fix to this or if it's worth fixing at all.

[nickm]

If we can come up with a real design for a fix, I'd like to get this nailed down to do something more sensible instead.

[nickm]

Do we have any actual design here? I'm not sure at all what the right behavior would be. If the right behavior is very different from the current behavior, we should defer.

[Jigsaw52]

I ran into a problem similar to this while implementing #1922.

Currently there are two syntaxes for configuration values on torrc:

• values enclosed by double quotes are read as C escaped strings
• values not enclosed by quotes are read as is and a backslash can be used as a line continuation character

Neither are good for Windows paths ending with a backslash and those are useful because they provide an easy way to tell the path is a directory.

I thought of adding a third syntax: values enclosed in single quotes would be read as is, without any escaping. The changes needed to support this are fairly simple and I do not think this would break any existing torrc.

What do you guys think?

[nickm]

So, there are two existing options that do work pretty well for windows paths, I believe.

• Unless I'm mistaken, you can just use forward-slashes instead of backslashes, and everything will work out.
• You can put a space at the end of the line after your path, and the backslash won't be interpreted as a line continuation.

Personally, I think that adding yet another key/value syntax is something we shouldn't do without a lot of thought and design, since our syntax is already more complicated than it should be.