editfiles missing the profound function?

[Yaroslav Halchenko]

Dear cfengine-admirers

Am I missing the point or cfengine[2] is missing I would say
most-often-used function which can be named like

AssignValue 'X FS' Z

which I would use whenever I want change/add_a_line_with a right
hand side of any assignment like

X FS Y
to 
X FS Z

where X is a name
FS is field separator (usually is ' *= *' or just ' *')
and Y and Z are values

The absense of such function and the fact that ReplaceAll doesn't quite
fit  due to possible recursion, led people to device monsters like

http://www.shipyard.com.au/shipyard/articles/sysadmin/cfengine-configfiles.py

where for a simple obioius rule like

AssignValue '^LogLevel *' 'INFO'

is presented as

      BeginGroupIfNoLineMatching '^LogLevel.*'
        Append 'LogLevel'
      EndGroup
      ResetSearch 1
      LocateLineMatching '^LogLevel.*'
      BeginGroupIfNoMatch '^LogLevel INFO$'
        ReplaceLineWith 'LogLevel INFO'
      EndGroup

which shows you how much duplication is necessary to handle such
situation in a right way.

Is there a way to fix the situation or describe me where I'm wrong?

Thank you all in advance


-- 
                                  .-.
=------------------------------   /v\  ----------------------------=
Keep in touch                    // \\     (yoh@|www.)onerussian.com
Yaroslav Halchenko              /(   )\               ICQ#: 60653192
                   Linux User    ^^-^^    [175555]