Re: [NSE] generic file parsing for datafiles.lua

[Kris Katterjohn <katterjohn () gmail com>]

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jah wrote:
> On 24/08/2008 20:43, Kris Katterjohn wrote:
> > Anyway, I think this is a really cool idea.  However, my one issue is
> > whether
> > or not this should be in datafiles or not.  This is because your
> > functions can
> > parse much more than just Nmap's data files, which my original library was
> > limited to.
> >
> > Maybe it should be a separate library ("parsefile" ?) and datafiles
> > can use it
> > for the parse*() functions.  Or, as you suggested, maybe my parse*()
> > functions
> > can be removed leaving just your functions.  But if these are removed, I
> > especially think the library should be renamed for the reasons I
> > mentioned above.
> I think the key thing about the parse_file() function is that not only
> can it deal with any (?) line-based data, but you can "have it your way"
> (mostly).  So you could parse Nmap's data files, but have the data
> structured differently.
> I think it might be a bit confusing for script writers to have more than
> one method for parsing Nmap's data files and for that reason I'd
> advocate one-library-does-all.  As for the name, parsefile is good, but
> I actually consider datafiles to be quite descriptive given that the
> kind of files that might be parsed are likely to be similar to Nmap's
> data files.  I suppose wordlists might become common.
> These, of course, are just my opinions and I'm easily swayed.

Either way is OK with me, I just originally named the library "datafiles"
because its existence was solely to handle Nmap's data files.

Since you offer the simple parse_file(<data file>) functionality, it's still
really easy to parse these files with or without my original functions.  And
since "datafiles" is already documented and whatnot, keeping the same name may
be best.

> > Either way, I think these additions are neat and hopefully I'll get
> > some time
> > to test them out some more.  For better or worse, the day the GSoC
> > ended my
> > school and personal life began again, but I've always tried to squeeze
> > Nmap
> > time into my schedule so we'll see :)
> Cripes!  Has GSoC finished already?  It's been raining a lot round these
> parts so it's quite hard to tell that the summer has ended.

Yes, unfortunately all good things come to an end.  But I hate the heat so I'm
hoping some cold weather comes soon :)

> Thanks for the comments Kris, I've attached an updated lib which
> corrects my mistake and also adds the prevention of using a pattern
> based key with a table for a value - this would return an array of
> matches from each line, for each line, which would just be silly.
>
> Still to do is some method to prevent duplicate keys overwriting a value
> - perhaps appending the value.  This would allow, for instance, indexing
> nmap services by service name.
> Obviously more testing is needed too.

Great, I'll try to test it all out soon and get back to you either way.

> Regards,
>
> jah

Thanks,
Kris Katterjohn


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