3. Configuration file

3.1. Syntax

The configuration file consists of a series of statements, with each statement keyword followed by parameters separated by whitespace, and the statement terminated by either the end of the line or a '#' comment marker. Comments continue from the '#' to the end of the line.

Blank lines are permitted.

Parameters and keywords are delimited by whitespace; parameters containing whitespace may be placed in single or double quotes. Quote characters can be themselves quoted by use of a preceding backslash ('\').

Continuation of statements across multiple lines is indicated by use of a backslash character at the end of the line (but before any trailing comments). Quoted strings can also be continued in this fashion, however the backslash must be at the end of the line, and cannot have a comment included. Leading whitespace on the continuation line will be treated as part of the quoted string.

For example:

# this is a comment
keyword parameter_1 "this is param 2" \ # another comment
	parameter_3

This shows a single keyword with three parameters, "parameter_1", "this is param 2" and "parameter_3".

3.2. Blocks

3.3. Include files

Each non-blank line read from an include file is appended to the line preceding the '@'. For example, if the configuration file contains:

group networks
	ip local @localnets
end group

and the file localnets contains

# Local networks
1.2.3.4
5.6.7.8
9.10.11.12

what is processed is:

group networks
        ip local 1.2.3.4
        ip local 5.6.7.8
        ip local 9.10.11.12
end group