Re: Remove script ids, just use file names?

["Verde Denim" <tdldev () gmail com>]

I'll caveat this by saying that I am somewhat less experienced with the
tool, but have application development experience on a number of platforms.

To answer your question, if the identifiers are generally more readable than
the script names, then I would opt for the identifiers in the output, with
an option
(as jah suggests) for output in the form of:

id                 |  filename                | categories | Short
Description | Description

How are the identifiers composed? If they are constructed by the coder, that
is to say that, if a script which performs non-invasive port probes is
called 'foo' by the person who assembles it, then using names would be a
step backward. However, if they are composed based on a more logical scheme,
such as niPortProbe, then identifiers provide information as to what they
are, and there might be good reason for the name and the identifier to be
one in the same, eliminating the need for one or the other, except in the
case where a user adds their own. If the script is used solely by that user,
they can call this whatever they'd like (so long as it doesn't conflict with
a script already built). If they are proposing a script for use by the
community, then a name/identifier would be assigned to it and added to the
available scripts (and documentation) with a full description of its
function.

Regards,
Jack




On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 12:43 AM, David Fifield <david () bamsoftware com>wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> Fyodor had the idea of getting rid of script ids and just identifying
> them by their file name instead. A script id is what is stored in the id
> field in a script. It's also what gets prefixed to each chunk of NSE
> output.
>
> Script ids offer a human-readable identifier for the script, which is
> nice. However user interaction with scripts is done using file
> names--when you want to run a certain script you give its file name on
> the command line. Knowing its id doesn't help, which can be frustrating
> when you want to re-run a single script whose output you see among that
> of other scripts.
>
> The effect of this would be to change
>
> 21/tcp  open   ftp
> |_ Anonymous FTP: FTP: Anonymous login allowed
> 80/tcp  open   http
> |_ HTML title: Foo.
> 110/tcp open   pop3
> |_ POP3 Capabilites:  USER CAPA RESP-CODES UIDL PIPELINING STLS TOP
> SASL(PLAIN)
>
> to
>
> 21/tcp  open   ftp
> |_ anonFTP: FTP: Anonymous login allowed
> 80/tcp  open   http
> |_ showHTMLTitle: Foo.
> 110/tcp open   pop3
> |_ popcapa:  USER CAPA RESP-CODES UIDL PIPELINING STLS TOP SASL(PLAIN)
>
> Do you see any downsides? If not I'll start working on this tomorrow.
>
> David Fifield
>
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