At 01:35 27/07/2001, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
>I think you missed my point.  People use empty() and isset() on a variable
>to check to see if that variable was set by the user.  As such that
>variable is unclean and whether it came in via register_globals or not is
>quite irrelevant.  If it is unclean it is unclean.  It doesn't matter at
>all which mechanism (GET/POST/COOKIE) populated the data from a security
>perspective.

I got your point, but I disagree on it.  I think that lots of users use 
isset() for implementing the same logic you demonstrated in your example, 
only in a clean, E_NOTICE-free way.  I know I used to do that, Heikki says 
he does, and my assumption is that it's a very common practice.

> > I actually think that turning E_NOTICE on is going to have a huge effect on
> > a mind boggling number of scripts, probably on the same order of magnitude
> > as setting register_globals to off (probably less, but not that much
> > less).  I think that unless we explain explicitly and vocally why we're
> > making these changes  (register_globals and/or error level), people will
> > just reconfigure php.ini to the old settings - I don't think they'll start
> > running after new E_NOTICE's they suddenly get after upgrading, unless
> > they'd know they have a good reason to.
>
>Baby-steps are needed for changes like this.  We can get away with the
>E_NOTICE change I think.  The register_globals change is much too drastic
>and it changes the basic nature of the language.  There are plenty of
>people using PHP today who have no clue what an array is.

I respectfully disagree :)  I think this issue is critical, and the way we 
handle it would show a lot on how serious we (less important) and PHP (more 
important) are considered.  In this case, making decision according to the 
least common denominator doesn't make since IMHO, and we should derive our 
decision from a security/reliability perspective, and not the 
newbie-friendliness perspective.

Zeev

Zeev


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