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Posted to cvs@httpd.apache.org by rs...@hyperreal.org on 1999/11/24 14:38:56 UTC
cvs commit: apache-1.3/cgi-bin printenv
rse 99/11/24 05:38:56
Modified: cgi-bin printenv
Log:
I know we don't want to see any "fancy" things in our printenv (as
they were already posted by various users over the last years), but
every time I need to use a little CGI script for testing purposes I get
annoyed by this really too weak printenv script. Sure, tables and other
stuff should be not our business, but at least the script should be a
little bit more robust and useful.
What I disliked most is that I usually have great problems to easily find a
variable (because the output is not sorted) and that various environment
values totally destroy the optical view on the table as a whole (mainly too
large values in $PATH and the nasty contents of SERVER_SIGNATURE). So here is
my minimal change to at least fix these problems without introducing fancy or
insecure stuff. Nevertheless feel free to back it out if you definitely
dislike any changes to printenv at all.
My changes are:
1. add a comment line to make it clear to the user that this is more or less
just a silly _demo_ script (for those who don't have Perl as their
secondary language beside their native language)
2. use content type text/plain instead of text/html to easily avoid printing
problems with variables like SERVER_SIGNATURE which contains HTML
code. This way we have to add extra escaping steps and the script
remains small.
3. sort the variables lexicographically in the output!
4. make sure very large lines (usually from $PATH) do not destroy the
total optical view on the table by cutting values and replacing
the missing stuff with "[...]".
5. surround values with quotes to allow one to better recognize newlines (as
in SERVER_SIGNATURE) and whitespaces and also print newlines
as \n and " as \" for a more Shell- and C-style syntax.
Revision Changes Path
1.4 +10 -3 apache-1.3/cgi-bin/printenv
Index: printenv
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/cvs/apache-1.3/cgi-bin/printenv,v
retrieving revision 1.3
retrieving revision 1.4
diff -u -r1.3 -r1.4
--- printenv 1996/12/09 03:51:57 1.3
+++ printenv 1999/11/24 13:38:55 1.4
@@ -1,7 +1,14 @@
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
+##
+## printenv -- demo CGI program which just prints its environment
+##
-print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
-while (($key, $val) = each %ENV) {
- print "$key = $val<BR>\n";
+print "Content-type: text/plain\n\n";
+foreach $var (sort(keys(%ENV))) {
+ $val = $ENV{$var};
+ $val =~ s|\n|\\n|g;
+ $val =~ s|"|\\"|g;
+ $val = substr($val, 0, 100).'[...]' if (length($val) > 100);
+ print "${var}=\"${val}\"\n";
}
Re: cvs commit: apache-1.3/cgi-bin printenv
Posted by Ben Laurie <be...@algroup.co.uk>.
Marc Slemko wrote:
> > 5. surround values with quotes to allow one to better recognize newlines (as
> > in SERVER_SIGNATURE) and whitespaces and also print newlines
> > as \n and " as \" for a more Shell- and C-style syntax.
>
> Is it really standard to not display "'s normally, but to stick a \ in
> front of them? I don't see that much.
Standard or not, if you are going to do it, you really ought to replace
\ with \\, too.
Cheers,
Ben.
--
http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi
Re: cvs commit: apache-1.3/cgi-bin printenv
Posted by Ben Laurie <be...@algroup.co.uk>.
Marc Slemko wrote:
> > 5. surround values with quotes to allow one to better recognize newlines (as
> > in SERVER_SIGNATURE) and whitespaces and also print newlines
> > as \n and " as \" for a more Shell- and C-style syntax.
>
> Is it really standard to not display "'s normally, but to stick a \ in
> front of them? I don't see that much.
Standard or not, if you are going to do it, you really ought to replace
\ with \\, too.
Cheers,
Ben.
--
http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi
Re: cvs commit: apache-1.3/cgi-bin printenv
Posted by Marc Slemko <ma...@znep.com>.
On 24 Nov 1999 rse@hyperreal.org wrote:
> 4. make sure very large lines (usually from $PATH) do not destroy the
> total optical view on the table by cutting values and replacing
> the missing stuff with "[...]".
Erm... this makes it less useful. If there is a long variable, then
it is saying something and you should see it. I don't buy that it is
"destroying the total optical view on the table". You can make it even
prettier by not displaying more than the first 50 characters, but you lose
even more information.
> 5. surround values with quotes to allow one to better recognize newlines (as
> in SERVER_SIGNATURE) and whitespaces and also print newlines
> as \n and " as \" for a more Shell- and C-style syntax.
Is it really standard to not display "'s normally, but to stick a \ in
front of them? I don't see that much.
Re: cvs commit: apache-1.3/cgi-bin printenv
Posted by Marc Slemko <ma...@znep.com>.
On 24 Nov 1999 rse@hyperreal.org wrote:
> 4. make sure very large lines (usually from $PATH) do not destroy the
> total optical view on the table by cutting values and replacing
> the missing stuff with "[...]".
Erm... this makes it less useful. If there is a long variable, then
it is saying something and you should see it. I don't buy that it is
"destroying the total optical view on the table". You can make it even
prettier by not displaying more than the first 50 characters, but you lose
even more information.
> 5. surround values with quotes to allow one to better recognize newlines (as
> in SERVER_SIGNATURE) and whitespaces and also print newlines
> as \n and " as \" for a more Shell- and C-style syntax.
Is it really standard to not display "'s normally, but to stick a \ in
front of them? I don't see that much.