`.enabled()` logic incorrectly returns true when namespace contains asterisk

[Qix-]

debug.disable('*');
debug.enable('foo');
assert.not(debug.enabled('bar'));
assert.not(debug.enabled('bar*')); // throws; returns true

Has to be solved in two ways:

• More stringent checks on namespaces (as they shouldn't contain asterisks)
• Remove the check for ns[ns.length-1]==='*', which makes absolutely no sense

[HaroldPutman]

yes!

[jasonk]

According to the documentation, this is by design:

If you append a "*" to the end of your name, it will always be enabled regardless of the setting of the DEBUG environment variable.

[Qix-]

Aha thanks @jasonk, definitely archaic functionality even I didn't know about.

I suppose there's really nothing to do here unless we want to break backwards compatibility.

[HaroldPutman]

That's certainly unexpected documented behavior. I was hoping to be able to tell if any of a "family" of debuggers is enabled by calling debug.enabled('dealer:*'). After reading the code I realize this is not an easy problem since the enabled debug namespaces are stored as regular expressions.

In the end I solved it like this:

const isDebugEnabled = require('debug').names.reduce((state, name) => {
      return state || name.toString().startsWith('/^dealer:');
    }, false);

Note that I am searching for a regular expression pattern. This is not foolproof, but maybe someone with a similar need can reuse this solution.

[stephenhandley]

naively seems like if (name === '*') { return true; } would be less surprising.

would be interesting to know if anyone made use of the bar* thing in some way