Controlling readline

Ruby
1

Hi all

Is there anyway to control the maxium length of the IO.readline can
read?

Thanks

2

Luo Yong wrote:

Hi all

Is there anyway to control the maxium length of the IO.readline can read?

Not really, not from the command line. You can throw away all the length
you
don’t want once it has been entered. It is way better to expect more
characters than you get than to get more than you expect (long sad story
about C/C++ “gets” snipped here).

Maybe you should describe the problem, rather than asking about this way
of
solving it.

3

On 11/12/06, Paul L. [email protected] wrote:

Maybe you should describe the problem, rather than asking about this way of
solving it.

–
Paul L.
http://www.arachnoid.com

I’m writing an RPC program.I use readline to read the command.I’m
afraid that my program can be attacked by others if I can’t limit the
maxium length the readline can read.So I’m finding a way to control
it.

4

Luo Yong wrote:

characters than you get than to get more than you expect (long sad story

I’m writing an RPC program.I use readline to read the command.I’m
afraid that my program can be attacked by others if I can’t limit the
maxium length the readline can read.So I’m finding a way to control
it.

As written, “readline” won’t read more than it can safely store, which
is
what you are after. Your concern arose from such things as “gets”,
mentioned in my last post, that wrote beyond its allocated buffer
because
it didn’t know its length.

Why don’t you read a character at a time, then stop reading characters
after
you have what you want? Like this:

#!/usr/bin/ruby -w

max = 16

while true

print “Type something:”
STDOUT.flush

input = STDIN.sysread(max)

puts “\nYou entered (in chunks of #{max} chars) #{input}.”

end

This routine reads the input in chunks of “max” characters, and
continues to
cycle through similarly sized chunks indefinitely. Linefeeds are not
special to it, although that would be easy to add. This gives you a
limit
on input size, but you then have to sort out for yourself what a line
is,
and where one ends and another begins.

5

On 11/12/06, Paul L. [email protected] wrote:

Not really, not from the command line. You can throw away all the length

it didn’t know its length.
while true

This may be the best way.

Thanks a lot.