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From: guy%gorodish@Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Destroying arguments
Message-ID: <19590@sun.uucp>
Date: Fri, 22-May-87 22:23:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.19590
Posted: Fri May 22 22:23:28 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 23-May-87 18:32:22 EDT
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> Seems to me that if you wanted to pass an argument "safely" to a
> process, and knew how to, you would do it the way
> I suggested.

If I wanted to pass a password safely to a program, I'd have the
program ask me for the password and I'd type it in!  If the program
insisted that I pass it as an argument, I'd simply declare the
program unacceptable.  I wouldn't do it the way you suggest at all;
requiring the user to type 40, or 80, or however many Xes is simply
silly.

> If you do not want secrecy or wanted to spite yourself for the inconvenience
> (maybe you don't have auto repeat on your keyboard) then you would not.

Great.  Now, in order to use some program safely, you just require
1) that the user know the maximum number of characters the "ps" on
the system will print (of course, this assumes that "ps" *imposes*
such a maximum; the maximum might very well be NCARGS) and 2) that
the user type this many Xes.

Sorry, that user interface design gets an F.
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com