Message 189405 - Python tracker

Message189405

Author	gregory.p.smith
Recipients	aaronsw, gregory.p.smith, josiahcarlson, mark.dickinson, mrabarnett, pitrou, rsc, schmir, terry.reedy, timehorse, witten, yarkot
Date	2013-05-16.20:27:53
SpamBayes Score	-1.0
Marked as misclassified	Yes
Message-id	<1368736073.89.0.757133461743.issue1662581@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
In-reply-to

Content
The recommendation for anyone using regular expressions on hostile input is to (a) don't do that. (b) use a better regexp without this possible behavior and (c) use something like re2 (there's a Python binding at https://github.com/axiak/pyre2) which is a regular expression engine that this cannot happen to. fixing this within python requires a complete rewrite and replacement of the re module with one that uses a different approach. see the other work on the MRAB regex module and discussion surrounding that. that is a non trivial task and it is fixing other more important things (unicode correctness!) than this... Given that, I don't actually expect this issue to ever be fixed. IMNSHO: People shouldn't abuse regexes and get themselves into this situation in the first place. ;) discussion should really happen on python-ideas.

Content

The recommendation for anyone using regular expressions on hostile input is to (a) don't do that. (b) use a better regexp without this possible behavior and (c) use something like re2 (there's a Python binding at https://github.com/axiak/pyre2) which is a regular expression engine that this cannot happen to.

fixing this within python requires a complete rewrite and replacement of the re module with one that uses a different approach.  see the other work on the MRAB regex module and discussion surrounding that.  that is a non trivial task and it is fixing other more important things (unicode correctness!) than this...

Given that, I don't actually expect this issue to ever be fixed.

IMNSHO: People shouldn't abuse regexes and get themselves into this situation in the first place. ;)

discussion should really happen on python-ideas.

History
Date	User	Action	Args
2013-05-16 20:27:53	gregory.p.smith	set	recipients: + gregory.p.smith, aaronsw, terry.reedy, josiahcarlson, mark.dickinson, pitrou, rsc, timehorse, schmir, mrabarnett, yarkot, witten
2013-05-16 20:27:53	gregory.p.smith	set	messageid: <1368736073.89.0.757133461743.issue1662581@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
2013-05-16 20:27:53	gregory.p.smith	link	issue1662581 messages
2013-05-16 20:27:53	gregory.p.smith	create