From: Ryan Pavlik <rpav@...>
Date: 2003-08-07T02:39:21+09:00
Subject: Re: Marshal format "safe"?

On Thu, 7 Aug 2003 00:30:41 +0900
matz@ruby-lang.org (Yukihiro Matsumoto) wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> In message "Marshal format "safe"?"
>     on 03/08/06, Ryan Pavlik <rpav@users.sf.net> writes:
> 
> |Basically, I'm just asking the question: is the Marshal format "safe",
> |at least in 1.8.0 final?
> 
> Define "safe" first.

I would say that "safe" in this case would be 1) not executing anything
that comes across the wire (which I have always believed to be the case,
just including it for completeness), 2) that the amount of memory used
is directly proportional to the number of bits that come across the
wire, and 3) bad/partial data will at worst throw an exception.

> I have no plan to change marshal format in the future, so that after
> 1.8.0, it should be version safe.

Cool, that's good to know. 

> I tried hard to make it very difficult to crash Ruby with a bad (or
> hand-written) marshal data.  So it should be input safe as long as
> limited resources, like memory, are available.

OK, that's what I wanted to know.  I will update to the 1.8 release
version, and put in some further checking.

> 							matz.

thanks,

-- 
Ryan Pavlik <rpav@users.sf.net>

"If you're not hunger, why am I craving cheeseburgers now?" - 8BT