Fix the unit test and open a giant hole everywhere

Re:Fix the unit test and open a giant hole everywhere by me_again on Saturday December 25, 2021 @10:47AM (#29684182)

I'd want a better reason before shelling out personally. Apart from security, other issues are:

- performance. Obviously that depends on the circumstances but if you are working on a function that is used in many places you don't know the circumstances.

- error handling and reporting. Are you going to capture stderr from mkdir? If this fails can you provide a clear indication of the problem to the caller?

- paths. If you run mkdir without specifying an absolute path your program may fail if $path is not what you expect. That can also be a vulnerability.

- dependencies. Now you won't run in a distroless container or other cut down environment

- you lose type safety

Not saying "never shell out" but I've been burned by most of these so I am cautious about it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Fix the unit test and open a giant hole everywhere by hamburglar on Saturday December 25, 2021 @12:21PM (#29684946)

“Never shell out” is pretty close to correct though. I’d say “only shell out as a last resort, and only after you’ve considered all the drawbacks.”

[ Parent | on HN ]