Re: NSE argument table syntax

[Joao Correa <joao () livewire com br>]

Hello guys,

Here follows the patch fixing whois.nse and dns-zone-transfer.nse to
enable the use of the new arguments table syntax.

Thanks.

On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 4:40 AM, Joao Correa<joao () livewire com br> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 1:12 AM, David Fifield<david () bamsoftware com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 10:32:20PM -0300, Joao Correa wrote:
> > > Thanks for the answer. I've discussed it a little with Patrick and we
> > > also agreed that it is not a great deal.
> > >
> > > I was just worried about making a function to keep it simpler for the
> > > future scripts. Do we expect that the backwards compatibility still
> > > works on these scripts to come? If so, it would be nice to have such
> > > function.
> > >
> > > I agree that the patch is not working, I've also found some other
> > > situations where it won't fix the problem. Sorry for not having
> > > updated it earlier.
> > >
> > > There are 4 scripts that use table arguments and it is not hard to
> > > make the manual checkings on them. The problem is just that it will be
> > > a recurrent problem for the future, as mentioned.
> >
> > I don't understand why it will be a future problem. If we're going to
> > make scripts take arguments like
> >        --script=scriptname.arg=val
> > then there's no reason to even support
> >        --script=scriptname={arg=val}
> > in new scripts.
> >
> > When I was talking about backwards compatibility, I was thinking about
> > someone who perhaps has a shell script that runs a command using the old
> > script argument format. We don't want to break all those commands. But
> > in new scripts there's no previous version to be compatible with.
> Thanks for clarifying David. I was confused about this point. Anyway,
> the compatibility was kept and the scripts are now accepting both
> syntaxes.
>
> > > Also, there is one more problem. Using the new syntax requires
> > > programmers to use nmap.registry.args['table.arg'] instead of
> > > nmap.registry.args.table.arg. I don't know if everyone agrees, but I
> > > think that it can make the code a little dirtier.
> >
> > That's a valid point. I agree it doesn't look as good. I think people
> > usually store the script arguments in local variables, so it doesn't
> > affect that much code. I think it would be better if better if
> > programmers could use the second syntax. I think you are right that the
> > external user interface is the most important. If we can have both then
> > that's even better.
> >
> > David Fifield
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Sent through the nmap-dev mailing list
> > http://cgi.insecure.org/mailman/listinfo/nmap-dev
> > Archived at http://SecLists.Org
>
> Thanks,
> Joao Correa

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