Re: [RFC][patch] Make timeout script-args consistent

[David Fifield <david () bamsoftware com>]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2013 at 11:30:41AM -0600, Daniel Miller wrote:
> I noticed that several timeout-related script-args were documented
> as accepting a timespec as defined in the man page
> (http://nmap.org/book/man-performance.html), but in reality only
> accepted a plain number. Also, for some scripts this number was
> seconds, and for others, milliseconds. The attached patch attempts
> to standardize on the timespec method, as well as fix some
> documentation issues (missing nsedoc, incorrect argument names,
> etc.)
>
> The major objection I'd expect here is for scripts that calculate
> timeouts in seconds (os.time() - start < timeout) which may
> misbehave if a timeout less than 1 second is specified (e.g.
> --script-args myscript.timeout=100ms), but since the script did not
> alter any defaults, this should not affect most users.
>
> Are there any other objections to applying this patch? If there is
> no response by Thursday morning, or if there is significant positive
> response, I will commit it.

I'm on board with this patch. You need to do the parts that change
behavior (milliseconds to seconds, like in broadcast-ping) as a separate
commit. All the parse_timespec changes should be refactoring that
doesn't change behavior for people already calling the scripts with
integer arguments. Anything that changes behavior, please put in a
separate commit.

David Fifield
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