Comment by oguz-ismail

7 days ago

>Still, the system() function is a mistake. Use posix_spawn().

They are entirely different interfaces though. If you'd implemented system() using posix_spawn() it'd be just as bad as system()

Why would you implement system() at all?

  • parse commands from config file? command-line arguments for hooks?

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44239036

    • I understand that it is convenient for running small snippets like that, but I don't really think it's worth the risk. And putting it into a config file is different, IMO. You don't get tempted to do some bad string interpolation there, because you can't, unless the config file format has support for that, but then I criticize that. If you need to pass things to such a snipped do it via environment variables or standard IO, not string interpolation.

      If you say you don't make such mistakes: Yeah, but people do. People that write the code that runs on your system.

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  • Because I don't want to implement a shell???

    • If you want to run a shell script, run a shell script. I.e. a text file with the executable bit set and a shebang. If you want to generate a shell script on the fly to then run it, take a step back and think about what you're doing.

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