In article <cifc0g$2gln$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Rex Couture says...
>
>In article <cifa5f$2d3u$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Sean Kelly says...
>>...which I expect to be quite uncommon in typical D programs.
>
>I was hoping for something more like total erradication.  Arcane Jill just gave us one simple scenario how such security holes will get in.  I'm confident that someone somewhere is going to use some treacherous C code or do something equally dumb.
>
>D is a good start, but keep thinking security.  :-)

Thing is, any systems programming language will let the programmer do all sorts of evil things if he really wants to.  I think Walter's approach is the correct one in that it makes such things a bit more complicated so such practices will tend to be restricted to places where they're actually needed.  Needless to say, the easiest way to prevent buffer overrun attacks is to use the code/data flags provided by modern processors.  But then a clever systems programmer may want his data segments executable :)


Sean

> The obvious issue that comes to mind is buffer overrun attacks (since they're
> such a hot topic these days).  D has built-in support for dynamic arrays and
> offers string.format (which can resize the buffer if needed) instead of sprintf,
> both of which reduce the likelyhood that an average program will be written in
> such a way that buffer attacks are possible (compared to C/C++).

Thanks Sean,

The teacher was talking about buffer over runs and linux has them also. If Linux could be remade in D then it would solve some problems. I doubt the likelyhood of that ever happen but okay. It is an advantage of D that I can discuss either in the report or in the Presentation.

>The way I'm going to write the report is on the "unique" features that D has:
>
>Design by Contract
>Template Syntax
>Built-in Garbage Collector
>Others...

Sorry, I don't get it.
Design by Contract isn't unique to D. Eiffel had id _LONG_ before D (IMHO that's
where D has "stolen" it from, but I'm only guessing, as there are so many
languages that have DbC built in, like Sather, ...).
A Garbage Collector isn't unique, too. Most languages actually have one.


>Perhaps also go into advantages/disavantages over .NET (there are some articles already on newsgroup that may help me).

NET is a language independend platform, D is a language. So you compare two things that have nothing in common. There actualy is a project called D.NET, which brings D to .NET.

-- Matthias Becker

I will reiterate and explain better what I'm trying to say. I'm comparing, C and C++ when I speak of D as they are fairly close. The uniqueness is that neither have some of the features builtin to the languages. I probably won't go into the history of languages that had the features before because I feel it is outside the depth of the report. If I went into explaining which languages had the features first and how they worked then I would have about a 30 paged report (hyperbole but you see the point?).

I know full well that there is a D.NET project and I was thinking of C# when I wrote .NET so it was my bad. The advantages and disadvantages comparsions will be with C# since they are fairly close, feature wise. I won't be comparing it to Java either, the teacher pretty much hates the Microsoft so I can get some kiss-ass points from bashing poor, helpless Microsoft.

If you like, I can post the report to the newsgroup and you can correct any mistakes I will make. It would help me out in editing the thing. My teacher isn't going to know enough to correct any mistakes I make... but he also won't know that there were any mistakes. I'm not the best writer so there will be grammar mistakes and some sentences will most likely suck but I won't need help with that, at least not from here.

I should probably make this OT...

Jacob Santos

> Sorry, I don't get it.
> Design by Contract isn't unique to D. Eiffel had it _LONG_ before D (IMHO that's
> where D has "stolen" it from, but I'm only guessing, as there are so many
> languages that have DbC built in, like Sather, ...).
> A Garbage Collector isn't unique, too. Most languages actually have one.
> 
> 
> 
>>Perhaps also go into advantages/disavantages over .NET (there are some articles already on newsgroup
>>that may help me).
> 
> 
> NET is a language independend platform, D is a language. So you compare two
> things that have nothing in common. There actualy is a project called D.NET,
> which brings D to .NET.
> 
> -- Matthias Becker
> 
> 

In article <cing4v$44a$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Gold Dragon says...

>If you like, I can post the report to the newsgroup and you can correct any mistakes I will make. It would help me out in editing the thing. My teacher isn't going to know enough to correct any mistakes I make... but he also won't know that there were any mistakes. I'm not the best writer so there will be grammar mistakes and some sentences will most likely suck but I won't need help with that, at least not from here.

Not wishing to sound rude, but it's generally considered bad practice to get a newsgroup or forum to do your homework for you. I think we're all happy to help out with opinions and information, but if you're gonig to get a better grade than your classmates, it should be because /you/ did the work.

Jill
(Apologies if I was way off the mark - hope that wasn't too offensive).

Nah, not to offensive and completely understood. Ha ha, ah damn.

I'm going to post back when I write the paper... which has to be soon. It would be cool to get opinion on the thing because the people in class are zombies. Last report... ah that story is for another time (Disclaimer: I'm never going to tell the story and I doubt that anyone cares to hear it).

> Not wishing to sound rude, but it's generally considered bad practice to get a
> newsgroup or forum to do your homework for you. I think we're all happy to help
> out with opinions and information, but if you're gonig to get a better grade
> than your classmates, it should be because /you/ did the work.
> 
> Jill
> (Apologies if I was way off the mark - hope that wasn't too offensive).