Re: [Patch] Support UTF-8 scripts

["\"Martin v. Löwis\"" <martin@v.loewis.de>]

D. Hazelton wrote:
> This is a bogus argument. You're comparing the way a _binary_ 
> executable works to the way an interpreted _text_ script works. 
> execve(), at least on my system, isn't capable of running a script - 
> if I want to do that from a program I have to tell execve() that it's 
> running /bin/sh and the script file is in the parameter list. 

This being the linux-kernel list, I assume your system is Linux, no?
Well, on Linux, execve *does* support script files. This is the whole
point of my patch - I would not propose a kernel patch to improve
this support if it weren't there in the first place.

> While I appreciate that the kernel is capable of performing complex 
> actions when execve runs into a file that is not an a.out or elf 
> binary I have yet to see a "binfmt script" option in the kernel 
> config files ever.

It's not a config option because it is always enabled. See
fs/binfmt_script.c for details. It wasn't integrated into the binfmt
system until I made it so some ten years ago, though.

> On the other hand, there is the "binfmt_misc" option, which does the 
> work that you seem to be looking for and can, AFAIK, be set to handle 
> both ASCII and UTF-8 scripts. Why add the complexity to the kernel 
> when it's not needed?

One shouldn't add complexity if its not needed. However, this patch
does not add complexity. It is fairly trivial.

Regards,
Martin