Just in case anyone ever lobbies to disable /dev/tcp in Bash again, I
want to add my support to leaving it enabled. Lots of languages have
features which are dubious at best ("leading zero means octal", for
example), but distributions tend to leave those features in place
because the languages are already widely used.
Because of Ubuntu, some of my Bash scripts have already been (in effect)
split into two versions -- one for older Ubuntu distributions, and one
for Red Hat & everything else. Granted, this sort of split is all too
common, and caused by far more than just /dev/tcp support. The point
remains that anytime a distributor second-guesses a language
implementation decision, it means that programs which have worked
correctly for years on multiple systems will suddenly stop working on
your distribution.
I agree that there are times when backward compatibility must give way
to modern security, but breaking existing programs should be a method of
last resort. Instead, we have an opinion that a long-standing language
feature would have been better handled by an external program, and an
accusation that improper usage of the feature can lead to "unexpected
results". That is nowhere near a strong enough argument to merit
breaking existing programs which work just fine on several other
platforms.
--
add /dev/tcp/... support
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/215034
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