On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 09:57:30AM -0800, dpuu wrote:
: On Nov 21, 9:16 am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Larry Wall) wrote:
: > Please feel free to whack on the spec
:
: OK, working on it.
:
: Question: is it appropriate to P6 look&feel to have methods on
: functions?
:
: The definition of C<chown> includes the statement that it's not
: available on most system unless you're superuser; and this can be
: checked using a POSIX incantation. I was wondering if it would be
: reasonable to provide this as a method on the chown function, so that
: a user could say:
:
: if &chown.is_restricted {
: ...
: }
: else {
: chown $user, $group <== @files
: }
On security issues where you often can't really determine in advance
whether something will work without trying it, I'd tend to lean more
towards throwing an exception and letting the user trap it, rather
than introducing more interface. But that's just a general guideline.
To answer your actual question, yes, there can certainly be methods
on code objects. But it's not clear to what extent this is a problem
for set theory to get involved with, unless the kernel knows your
set theory and agrees with you. :)
Another problem with the "can I do this" ask-in-advance approach
is that it opens you up to race conditions, though in this case
it's unlikely (but possible) that another thread would change your
superuser status in between.
Larry
