Hi there, On Wed, 14 Jul 2021, Michael Wang wrote:
I discovered that the "=" sign in freshclam option is mandatory. For example: freshclam --datadir=c:\temp\database (with =) and freshclam --datadir c:\temp\database (without =) are different. In the latter, the option "--datadir c:\temp\database" is ignored as if it were not specified. On the other hand, the "=" in clamscan option is optional, i.e. clamscan --log=c:\tmp\my.log and clamscan --log c:\tmp\my.log are equivalent. I would like to get a confirmation that this is true, and secondly to get an opinion if this is a bug, as far as I know, the = in option should be optional.
If an option takes an argument, and it has long and short forms (for example -l and --log) then it's more or less a Unix custom for the short form of the option to require that there is no following '=', and for the long form to require one. As you say, the clamscan and freshclam 'man' pages show that, but it seems that the conformance of the executables to the custom is patchy. I've confirmed that clamscan on Linux behaves in the same way you have described for Windows. Because of the changes currently taking place in the main and daily databases I haven't run freshclam to test it (in any case I very rarely run freshclam manually) but I'd be surprised if it didn't also behave in the same way. Most of the code is common (in .../shared/optparser.c) to both operating systems. Thesedays, rather than re-invent that particular wheel I'd use a library, but I guess at the time this was written (getting on for twenty years ago) the author had his reasons. I think you've found two faults, not one. Unless the man page says that it will ignore a malformed option, freshclam should not do that; it should issue an error message and quit with no other action. And the '=' should be required, not optional, in the option's long form. I'd recommend reporting the faults via the ClamAV Bugzilla, if they have not already been reported. Full marks for studying the man pages carefully and checking that the binaries behave as described. -- 73, Ged. _______________________________________________ clamav-users mailing list clamav-users@lists.clamav.net https://lists.clamav.net/mailman/listinfo/clamav-users Help us build a comprehensive ClamAV guide: https://github.com/vrtadmin/clamav-faq http://www.clamav.net/contact.html#ml
