Re: NSE Script Arguments (Was: Script selection - Gsoc)

[Kris Katterjohn <katterjohn () gmail com>]

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On 04/05/2010 12:13 AM, Patrick Donnelly wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 12:37 AM, Kris Katterjohn <katterjohn () gmail com> wrote:
> > On 04/04/2010 11:14 PM, Patrick Donnelly wrote:
> > > I'm undecided on whether we should strip some "identifier" for script
> > > arguments in the above code snippet. Something like this:
> > >
> > > arg["ldap-brute.username"] = arg["ldap-brute.username"] or "foo"
> > >
> > > versus
> > >
> > > arg["username"] = arg["username"] or "foo" -- the ldap-brute prefix is
> > > inferred by nse_main.lua
> > >
> > > I think I prefer the former because many scripts "share" the same argument.
> > I don't like the former, since it's uglier than the latter and seems redundant
> > to have the script name prefix in the argument name given to that script.
> >
> > I say just have the arguments with the script id in the name take precedence
> > over the same argument without the explicit prefix.  This is what I thought it
> > was used for anyway, and to allow (as you said) for scripts to share args.
> >
> > The showing below assumes a user runs a script "script" and the evaluations
> > take place in the context of "script".
> >
> > If a user specifies "script.user=kris" then
> >
> > arg["user"] => "kris"
> >
> > and if a user specifies "user=kris" then
> >
> > arg["user"] => "kris"
> >
> > but if a user specifies "script.user=patrick,user=kris" then
> >
> > arg["user"] => "patrick"
> >
> > since the prefixed argument takes precedence over the other when used in the
> > context of the script "script".  So the use of the explicit script prefix is
> > transparent to the script, and I don't see a problem with this aspect.
>
> Do we have scripts that would benefit from this inheritance structure?

I thought there would be more, but here's what I see off-hand:

ipidseq
qscan
whois
dns-fuzz

I don't understand why all script aren't processing args like this (I assumed
they were).  Users don't know one script to the next which ones require the
script name prefix, which don't, and which can have args which are shared.

And I don't consider this inheritance more so than simple scoping, as I've
called it since apparently mid-2008 [1].  I guess I'm one of only just a few
who views it this way?

So really I think all scripts can benefit from this, because the inconsistency
in the script prefix requirements in the argument name seems like something to
fix.

Cheers,
Kris Katterjohn

[1] http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2008/q2/565

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