This is the mail archive of the
libc-alpha@sources.redhat.com
mailing list for the glibc project.
Re: getopt() argument permuting considered risky
- From: Måns Rullgård <mru at kth dot se>
- To: libc-alpha at sources dot redhat dot com
- Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2004 11:30:52 +0200
- Subject: Re: getopt() argument permuting considered risky
- References: <30806.1091610569@www49.gmx.net>
"Michael T Kerrisk" <mtk-lists@gmx.net> writes:
[why argument permutation is bad]
> Some suggestions:
>
> 1. What are the chances of having this feature removed
> from glibc's getopt()?
>
> I realise that the argument is probably: "it will
> break existing applications". Some responses:
>
> a) Is that really true: are there really applications
> that depend on this non-standard behaviour?
The only difference I see would be that the user would be required to
pass option arguments before non-option arguments.
> b) The existing behaviour is a security risk, as
> described above.
>
> 2. Perhaps Linux distributors should be setting
> POSIXLY_CORRECT in their default shell start-up
> files?
Doing so would also alter lots of useful behavior from various GNU
tools.
--
Måns Rullgård
mru@kth.se