Removing password from processing table???

[Brian K. White]

On 4/23/2014 11:23 AM, Nancy Palmquist wrote:
> Brian,
>
> You make it way to hard.
>
> In the situation below, it is very easy to get the password out. Just
> insert a line at the beginning of the file with ::: (three colons) and
> save the file.
>
> It does not matter that you leave the password on line two.  Filepro
> will not care and when the process is opened and resaved it will be gone
> from there.

Ha nice trick!

But for reference, and for scripts too, which to me are both reference 
and utility, I prefer not to rely on particular undocumented behavior of 
technically invalid data or formats as a way to do things if the right 
way is not that hard.

That process is not "removing the password", it's doing some 
undocumented thing and relying on some undocumented behavior that just 
happens to end up resulting in the password being gone by the end of the 
process. Basically it's luck. Luck that cabe behaves a certain way about 
something that's not part of is documented promised behavior.

I don't know if it's explicitly documented that you can remove the 
password the direct way I described either, but, it is implicitly 
documented simply by the documentation of all the file formats.

I don't know if I've really explained the objection too well but let's 
put it this way, 10 years later when I come across a script that says it 
removes a password, the one that actually edits the top line and removes 
the password is a lot more accurate and self documenting, and it will 
work as long as the file format of prc tables remains valid, it won't 
break if clerk or report or cabe start choking on extraneous 4th fields 
on lines in some newer, or older, version than the current ones.

Now multiply that by all the scripts and programs you write in 10 years.

-- 
bkw