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List:       nmap-dev
Subject:    Re: --script-updatedb path sep strangeness
From:       Patrick Donnelly <batrick () batbytes ! com>
Date:       2009-04-29 23:45:59
Message-ID: 790db3550904291645y3f845f48w5dd656ed346662b9 () mail ! gmail ! com
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Hi Jah,

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 2:02 PM, jah <jah@zadkiel.plus.com> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> On windows, after a --script-updatedb, the script filenames in script.db
> have a leading backslash.  This causes an error such as:
>
> NSE: failed to initialize the script engine:
> C:\Program Files\Nmap\nse_main.lua:385: ♀tp-anon.nse is not a file!
> stack traceback:
>        [C]: in function 'assert'
>        C:\Program Files\Nmap\nse_main.lua:385: in function
> 'get_chosen_scripts'
>
>        C:\Program Files\Nmap\nse_main.lua:541: in main chunk
>        [C]: ?
>
> (that's the symbol for Venus in place of the f in ftp-anon)
>
> I tracked this down to a Lua pattern in the const char load_db[] in
> nse_main.cc script-updatedb().
> The pattern:
> local basename = assert(match(script, '[/\\]?([^/\\]-%.nse)$'))\n
>
> I found that when the Lua code this char represents is run, the pattern
> becomes: '[/]?([^/]-%.nse)$'
> so something has eaten the backslashes in the pattern (perhaps in
> luaL_loadstring()) and so it captures the script filename with a leading
> slash.
> Adding a third backslash makes no difference, but adding a fourth:
> '[/\\\\]?([^/\\\\]-%.nse)$' does the trick.
>
> The attached patch is for this purpose, but I haven't committed it as I
> wonder whether this strangeness might allude to some other problem
> -perhaps the string is being interpreted twice.

This is a good catch. The backslash is interpretted as an escape
sequence by the C literal parser and the Lua string parser. For this
reason, we need 4 backslashes:

"match(script, '[/\\]?([^/\\]-%.nse)$')"
--> is seen by Lua as:
"match(script, '[/\]?([^/\]-%.nse)$')"
--> which becomes after Lua parses this string:
match(script, '[/]?([^/]-%.nse)$')

Properly:
"match(script, '[/\\\\]?([^/\\\\]-%.nse)$')"
--> is seen by Lua as:
"match(script, '[/\\]?([^/\\]-%.nse)$')"
--> which becomes after Lua parses this string:
match(script, '[/\]?([^/\]-%.nse)$')
So we need four backslashes to get the backslash escaped properly:

I dislike embedding Lua code in C for this reason. Hopefully we can
relocate this code to nse_main.lua in the future so this type of thing
can no longer happen.

Feel free to apply your patch.

Thanks for the report,

-- 
-Patrick Donnelly

"Let all men know thee, but no man know thee thoroughly: Men freely
ford that see the shallows."

- Benjamin Franklin

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