Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Tla spork

[James Blackwell]

Tom Lord wrote:
> /usr/.../bin/tla-wrapped:
>
>   #!/bin/sh
>
>   tla --hat "$ARCH_HAT" "$@"
>
> ?
>
> (I generally don't want that kind of environment-variable sensitivity
> in tla itself because, while, sure, in some cases its handy, in other
> cases it is an easy source of bugs, flakiness, exploits, etc...)

I imagine it closer to the following (I'm playing loose with the code
here): 

my_hat = 0

if ( valid_hat(getenv("ARCH_HAT")))
    my_hat = get_env("ARCH_HAT")

if (! my_hat)
  my_hat = get_arch_hat()

if (! my_hat)
  my_hat = passed_hat

if (! my_hat)
   panic("You're not wearing any hats!")


bugs:
  I don't think we'd have a problem here. Sure, if tla didn't
  provide library support to look up the my-idish stuff, or if tla
  was not using it consistantly, I'd agree. But tla does use the library
  routines consistantly, so we don't need to worry about either bugs or
  flakiness (a subset of bugs)

exploits: 
I think that we're safe here because of the lack of statically defined
buffers. Somebody thought ahead of that problem and wrote hackerlab.

-- 
James Blackwell          Try something fun: For the next 24 hours, give
Smile more!              each person you meet a compliment!

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