#291: Fixes & improvements to parameter hunter

[james-nash]

Addresses #291

Summary of changes:

• core/lib/parameter_hunter.js
  • ADDED a bunch of helper functions that paramToJson() now uses. Hopefully the in-source comments explain their details sufficiently well:
    • extractNextKeyOrValue(): Extracts the next unquoted / single-quoted / double-quoted text
    • doubleQuoteKeyOrValIfNeeded(): Converts text to its double-quoted equivalent
    • extractNextKeyValPair(): Extracts the next complete parameter (i.e. key:value pair)
  • CHANGED paramToJson(): Completely re-written. It now acts more parser-like, trying to find key, colon, value and comma in that order. If one of them is missing, it skips ahead until it finds a comma (or the end of the string), so that subsequent parameters can still be found.
  • CHANGED findparameters(): Minor change to remove the curly braces from the param string before it is passed to paramToJson().
• test/parameter_hunter_tests.js
  • ADDED the following tests:
    • parameter hunter parses parameters with values containing a closing parenthesis
    • parameter hunter parses parameters that follow a non-quoted value
    • parameter hunter parses parameters whose keys contain escaped quotes
    • parameter hunter skips malformed parameters

I also included this unrelated change by accident (sorry):

• .gitignore
  • ADDED a rule to exclude npm-debug.log, which gets generated when you run with debug enabled in the config file.

[e2tha-e]

@james-nash @bmuenzenmeyer
I want to be sure this doesn't conflict too much with pr #277 . Can I take some time to review this and add my thoughts? Thanks.

[bmuenzenmeyer]

Closing this PR per #293 (comment)

Appreciate the teamwork!