Passing List of Variables In Bash To External Program - linux

Good Afternoon Everyone,
This is probably a no-brainer but, I'm currently having issues passing a variable to a program in my bash script.
Here's what I'm trying to do:
regions=ne,se,vt,ma,sw,nw and so on and so forth
After that variable has been defined in my bash script, I'd then like to pass that variable into GrADS, where my script will read each of the regions one after the other until it reaches the end.

The most reliable means of passing variables I've found is to generate a text file with the code (or just the string) you want to pass from within the code. Alternatively, you could call GrADS (?) from within whatever program is generating the variable, and pass "$regions" as an argument.

Related

JMeter functions and variables

I'm new to JMeter so this question may sound absolutely dumb...
I have a loop in which a variable (let's say it is called "raw") is being changed and written to file every iteration. The variable contains HTML encoded text so it has to be converted into plain text. I found out this can be done using __unescapeHtml function. When I tried using it worked but I ended up always receiving the same text as on the first iteration. Then I learned that I have to use vars.get instead of ${} to access a variable. So I changed ${__unescapeHtml("${raw}")} to ${__unescapeHtml(vars.get("raw")} which kind of helped: vars.get is getting the new value of raw each iteration but __unescapeHtml didn't work at all now - it just returns the encoded text from raw. I didn't succeded finding anything about this exact problem so I'm kind of stuck.
Ended up using
import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringEscapeUtils
...
StringEscapeUtils.unescapeHtml4(vars.get("raw"))
Don't know if it is a good way to do this but at least it works.
I assume, that you are using the expression ${...} inside a JSR-223 sampler or similar context. The user manual for JSR-223 Sampler states, that those scripts can be cached by JMeter. That is why you only get the values from the first time the context gets created.
The same is true for simple variable evaluations as ${varname}, as for function calls like ${__unescapeHtml(...)}.
The solution here is:
don't use ${...} inside of JSR-223 contexts, that might be cached.
you can however pass those expressions (${...}) into the context by using them as parameters through the input labeled Parameters on the JSR-223 Sampler – again assuming, that you are using it.
you can use the features, that your chosen JSR-223 context gives you, as you have done, by using the StringEscapeUtils#unescapeHtml4

Passing argument to lua function after evaluating function in string

I have functions process and matrix. The following code works
process(matrix({{2,4,6},{8,10,12},{14,16,20}}))
However the following doesn't work.
n='matrix({{2,4,6},{8,10,12},{14,16,20}})'
process(n)
It throws some error. The reason is obvious that process takes n as string rather than the output of the function matrix. So the basic difficulty involved here is about evaluating string from variable n and then give it as argument to the function process. Here loadstring function is of no use as matrix is local function and can't be referred from loadstring.
Is there any work around for this? I hope that I have clearly stated the problem here. It is about evaluating (or unloading) string and then passing it as argument to another function. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.
as matrix is local function
Lua takes local declarations seriously. If a variable is declared local, it can only be accessed by code which is statically within the local scope of that variable. Strings which you later turn into code are not statically in the local scope and therefore cannot access local variables.
Now, with Lua 5.2+, you can provide load with a second parameter, a table which represents the global environment against which that Lua chunk will be built. If that table contains a matrix value, then the loaded string can access it. For Lua 5.1, you'd have to use setfenv on the function returned to load to accomplish a similar effect. The Lua 5.2+ method would look like this:
local env = {matrix = matrix}
local func = load("return matrix({{2,4,6},{8,10,12},{14,16,20}})", nil, "t", env)
process(func())
Note the following:
You must create an explicit table which is the global environment. There's nothing you can pass that says "make my locals available"; you have to put every local you'd like to access there. Which is, generally speaking, why you pass these things as parameters or just make them globals.
You explicitly need the "return " there if you want to get the results of the call to matrix.
You have to call the function. Functions are values in Lua, so you can freely pass them around. But if you want to pass the results of a function to another function, you have to actually call it.

How to to pass a string to function arguments in python3

I'm building a command-line interface using the argparse library to parse user input. At one stage, I'd like to take user input such as "'test', x=False" and use it in a function such as func('test', x=False).
I've tried using ast.literal_eval to do this but it encounters a syntax error at the equals sign. (I did ast.literal_eval("("+args+")") where args was above example)
Does anyone know of a safe way to parse the user input like that? Preferably without eval although worst-case scenario I could use eval as, well, it's a CLI tool.
Edit (to people that have said to use input manually(): I need the tool to parse input from when the command is run (it's a python module that I want to be able to be called like python3 -m hmcli.raw --args "'test', x=False" where the args can be flexible as the function used can differ.

Python3 - sanitizing user input passed to shell as parameter

What is the recommended method of sanitizing user_input_parameter passed to the shell like
subprocess.Popen(['sudo', 'rm -rf', user_input_parameter])
The command should accept all parameters but malicious activies like breaking out of the command should be mitigated.
Python's implementation of subprocess protects against shell injection, documentation says so:
17.5.2. Security Considerations
Unlike some other popen functions, this implementation will never
implicitly call a system shell. This means that all characters,
including shell metacharacters, can safely be passed to child
processes. If the shell is invoked explicitly, via shell=True, it is
the application’s responsibility to ensure that all whitespace and
metacharacters are quoted appropriately to avoid shell injection
vulnerabilities.
When using shell=True, the shlex.quote() function can be used to
properly escape whitespace and shell metacharacters in strings that
are going to be used to construct shell commands.
This will however NOT protect against a user passing a malicious input - in your case for example deleting something that was not intended to be deleted. I would not pass user input to the command directly like that - you should verify if whatever you want to be deleted is being deleted and not something completely different. That is however part of application's logic already - regarding shell injection (breaking out of the command) - that should be fine with subprocess.
I made this little example:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import subprocess
user_input_parameter = '/; id'
subprocess.Popen(['ls', user_input_parameter])
Which outputs this when executed:
$ python3 asdf.py
ls: /; id: No such file or directory
$
To demonstrate subprocess passes the input as an argument to the parameter.
All of this is true only if shell=False (default as of writing this answer) for subprocess methods, otherwise you basically enable shell (bash, etc.) execution and allow for injection to happen if inputs are not properly sanitized.
Btw, you need to pass each parameter separately, so you would need to run it like this (but please don't do that):
subprocess.Popen(['sudo', 'rm', '-rf', user_input_parameter])

In BASH, can we assign and display the value in the variable _ (underscore)?

Answering to the following question:
Allowed characters in linux environment variable names #aiden-bell writes that the following patterns gives all allowed shell variable names in BASH : [a-zA-Z_]+[a-zA-Z0-9_]*
I found this to be true. In fact I can export value _="Just for fun". Unfortunately though, whenever I print it I get __bp_preexec_invoke_exec
I went through this thread and while it is instructive it doesn't actually answer my question. Irrespective of whatever the shell might do with the variable $_, can I use it for my own means? Also, whatever exactly is __bp_preexec_invoke_exec? Thanks and regards.
You can assign to the special parameter _, but the shell will also update its value after each command. Typically, you only use it as a dummy variable where you don't care about the result, such as in something like
while read _ second _ ; do ...; done < input.txt
where you only care about the second column of each input line.
From the man page:
_ At shell startup, set to the absolute pathname used to invoke
the shell or shell script being executed as passed in the envi-
ronment or argument list. Subsequently, expands to the last
argument to the previous command, after expansion. Also set to
the full pathname used to invoke each command executed and
placed in the environment exported to that command. When check-
ing mail, this parameter holds the name of the mail file cur-
rently being checked.

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