Parsing yum.repos.d

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

How do you parse the following line from:/etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-core.repo:
        
mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=core-$releasever&arch=$basearch


The complete paragraph containing the line is:

[core]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch
#baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os/
mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=core-$releasever&arch=$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY


I have been informed that $release and $basearch are interpreted by the
yum client as described in the yum man page, but that "?" and "=" (and
the surrounding text) are interpreted by Fedora's mirrorlist server.
Can anyone enlighten me about how these characters are handled?

Thanks - jon