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Variable filter chain split on '|' is quote-unaware: re("UP|DOWN") silently degrades to \S+ #23

Description

@roc-ops

Summary

internal/pattern/engine.go (parseVariableWithVars) does strings.Split(variableStr, "|") to separate the variable name from its filter chain. The split is quote-unaware, so any | inside a quoted re("...") argument is treated as a filter separator.

{{ direction | re("UP|DOWN") }} becomes filters re("UP and DOWN"). The malformed re( arg falls through the built-in-pattern lookup and the variable silently degrades to the default \S+ — it then matches any token.

Tested variants that all exhibit the bug: re("UP|DOWN"), re("(?:UP|DOWN)"), re("(UP|DOWN)"), re("UP\|DOWN"), re("(?i:up|down)"). re("(?:UP)|(?:DOWN)") crashes the parse.

Repro

Input line: 1 DOWN tengigabitethernet 1/1/1Enable 7
and sibling table rows 300 -- 1s 7 ... / 1 2 Discovery Up Up ... in the same buffer.

<group name="m*">
{{ id | DIGIT | to_int }}  {{ direction | re("(?:UP|DOWN)") }}  {{ rest | ROW }}
</group>

Result: 4 rows with direction = --, DOWN, 2, None (expected 1 row).
With re("[UD][PO]W?N?") (no pipe) → 1 row, correct.

Impact

Silent over-matching: sibling tables bleed into the wrong list; any column that looks constrained is actually unconstrained. Found while building Telco X-Series CFM templates (DH360-Device-Discovery field-mappings/templates/show_ethernet_cfm_full-detail.ttp).

Suggested fix

Split the filter chain with a quote-aware tokenizer (track "/' state; also (/) depth so re("a|b") and lookup("x", add_field="y") stay intact), or parse re(...) args before splitting.

Related

A second, smaller quirk: a {{ x | set("v") }} placed after {{ r | ROW }} on the same line truncates ROW to \S+. Moving set() before the ROW capture avoids it.

Activity

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