4 ms·

This problem is not exclusive to bash, try copy-pasting python 2 code into python 3. Or ES2020 code in a browser. Or ASM z80 into an x86 program. When you're

by linkdd 6y ago

This problem is not exclusive to bash, try copy-pasting python 2 code into python 3. Or ES2020 code in a browser. Or ASM z80 into an x86 program. When you're copy-pasting, you should be aware of what you're copying, and where you're pasting it. Surely, no domain in IT is idiot-proof.

dataflow 6y ago
> This problem is not exclusive to bash, try copy-pasting python 2 code into python 3. No, it is highly exclusive to Bash actually. In Bash, even one-character mistakes have a high potential to cause catastrophic damage. Just splitting or globbing on the wrong character can wipe your filesystem. As well as issues like these, where your string being '!' suddenly causes the command to be interpreted entirely differently. And Bash has modes that keep going when there is an error so it's not like you'll even know you've encountered an error or get any kind of visible crash + stack trace necessarily. It just keeps trashing everything further and further. These are extremely wildly different from Python. > Surely, no domain in IT is idiot-proof. I would love to know what happens when you say this to a user who pastes your Bash in zsh. Do you tell them your code isn't idiot-proof? Is everyone who ends up running Bash in zsh for some reason or another an idiot?
- linkdd 6y ago
  If you're not doing `set -euo` and if you run your scripts as root before testing them, you're asking for something wrong to happen. EDIT in response to your EDIT: My users get either: - a tar.gz archive - a binary - a docker image - an helm chart - a POSIX shell script (very rare) Then they can use any method they want to deploy it. You want your software to be portable? You have to put in the work to do it. If you expect your users to know better (assume they ARE idiots), again, you're asking for something wrong to happen.
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    No, if you're using a language that requires you to perform some obscure incantation like "set -euo" before running your scripts, you're asking for something wrong to happen. Blame the disease, not the symptom.
    - dylan604 6y ago
      if your pedantic enough to use "set -euo", you're going to add it to the script and not make a user set it first.
  - dataflow 6y ago
    > If you're not doing `set -euo` and if you run your scripts as root before testing them, you're asking for something wrong to happen. ...because you can't delete important files unless you're root, right? Subfolders in your home directory are totally OK being deleted? You store your documents so that only root can modify them? And do you know set -e has a ton of its own pitfalls and doesn't save you from this? It's a half-broken mitigation. I don't have energy to keep arguing here, but I would suggest go learning about the pitfalls of Bash and set -e and such.
  - dolmen 6y ago
    You mean "set -euo pipefail", don't you? You should use more copy/paste. ;)

by linkdd 6y ago

dataflow 6y ago

> This problem is not exclusive to bash, try copy-pasting python 2 code into python 3. No, it is highly exclusive to Bash actually. In Bash, even one-character mistakes have a high potential to cause catastrophic damage. Just splitting or globbing on the wrong character can wipe your filesystem. As well as issues like these, where your string being '!' suddenly causes the command to be interpreted entirely differently. And Bash has modes that keep going when there is an error so it's not like you'll even know you've encountered an error or get any kind of visible crash + stack trace necessarily. It just keeps trashing everything further and further. These are extremely wildly different from Python. > Surely, no domain in IT is idiot-proof. I would love to know what happens when you say this to a user who pastes your Bash in zsh. Do you tell them your code isn't idiot-proof? Is everyone who ends up running Bash in zsh for some reason or another an idiot?

linkdd 6y ago
If you're not doing `set -euo` and if you run your scripts as root before testing them, you're asking for something wrong to happen. EDIT in response to your EDIT: My users get either: - a tar.gz archive - a binary - a docker image - an helm chart - a POSIX shell script (very rare) Then they can use any method they want to deploy it. You want your software to be portable? You have to put in the work to do it. If you expect your users to know better (assume they ARE idiots), again, you're asking for something wrong to happen.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  No, if you're using a language that requires you to perform some obscure incantation like "set -euo" before running your scripts, you're asking for something wrong to happen. Blame the disease, not the symptom.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    if your pedantic enough to use "set -euo", you're going to add it to the script and not make a user set it first.
- dataflow 6y ago
  > If you're not doing `set -euo` and if you run your scripts as root before testing them, you're asking for something wrong to happen. ...because you can't delete important files unless you're root, right? Subfolders in your home directory are totally OK being deleted? You store your documents so that only root can modify them? And do you know set -e has a ton of its own pitfalls and doesn't save you from this? It's a half-broken mitigation. I don't have energy to keep arguing here, but I would suggest go learning about the pitfalls of Bash and set -e and such.
- dolmen 6y ago
  You mean "set -euo pipefail", don't you? You should use more copy/paste. ;)