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Relax alphanum_ext_string schema to support numeric and version-based environment names #3645
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[-]Relax 'alphanum_ext_string' schema to support numeric and version-based environment names[/-][+]Relax `alphanum_ext_string` schema to support numeric and version-based environment names[/+]on Mar 27, 2026 Hi @MagicMyles, could you give an example of an environment name that would be more natural if it started with a digit?
Hi @vkarak, thanks for helping. Its very appreciated.
Yes we have date based environment names such as
2026.04which is not allowed due to thealphanum_ext_stringpattern check:"alphanum_ext_string": { "type": "string", "pattern": "([a-zA-Z_]([a-zA-Z0-9_]|-)*)" }I would say its not a major blocker as we can rename our environments. However it creates inconsistencies which is not ideal.
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on Sep 4, 2026 @MagicMyles Could you try out #3725 ?
@MagicMyles Could you try out #3725 ?
Hi @vkarak ,
Thank you very much for implementing this for us. It is much appreciated!
It looks okay to me. The update to the schema alphanum_ext_string pattern is what we needed for the names of our environments.
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Currently, ReFrame environment names are validated against the alphanum_ext_string definition in the internal JSON schema. This regex explicitly requires names to start with a letter.
https://github.com/reframe-hpc/reframe/blob/develop/reframe/schemas/config.json#L379
This prevents users from using standard versioning or date-based strings as environment names.
Proposed Fix:
Update the alphanum_ext_string pattern in the ReFrame schema definitions to allow digits at the start of the string and include the dot character.
Current Regex:
^([a-zA-Z_]([a-zA-Z0-9_]|-)*)$Proposed Regex:
^([a-zA-Z0-9_]([a-zA-Z0-9_\.-])*)$