comment on

I've seen the details, and I'm angry with the reporting. The problem is not Perl. The problem is undereducated Perl Programmers.

Sorry you are wrong.

Perl very definately has buffer overrun issues in printf. This is very clear from the p5p activitiy on this subject. While there is no doubt that the original problem is due to not properly vetting printf format strings the fact is that such behaviour also coincides with bugs in Perl that make the problem much much worse. The following are some of the examples from the p5p thread on the subject.

D:\dev\PM>perl -e"printf'%9999999999s' 
(coredump)
D:\dev\PM>perl -w -le "print sprintf 'xxx%n'; print undef"
xxx
3
[download]

Having said this you can expect this issue to be closed in 5.8.8

---
$world=~s/war/peace/g

In reply to Re^2: Attack on Perl or Perl's need better PR (again) by demerphq
in thread Attack on Perl or Perl's need better PR (again) by wazoox

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