Re: strings in gnumeric / awk / etc.

["Uri David Akavia" <uridavid akavia gmail com>]

Right.
I must have been misunderstanding something, since I was thinking
about macros, similar to Excel.
However, if the entire discussion boils down to running gawk on a
saved Gnumeric file, then processing the output, it really isn't that
different from just opening a terminal, isn't it?
Or am I missing something again?

Yours,

Uri David

On 1/16/07, Andreas J. Guelzow <aguelzow math concordia ab ca> wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-16-01 at 21:50 +0200, Uri David Akavia wrote:
> > On 1/16/07, Leonard Mada <discoleo gmx net> wrote:
> > >
> > > gawk has many advantages and I may point another two:
> > > - it is easy and simple, and very very fast (both to write and execute -
> > > even on huge datasets)
> > > - the code is structured and visible, so it is easy to understand what
> > > it does (this is NOT always the case when you write complex formulas in
> > > the spreadsheet)
> > >
> > > I hope these are enough reasons to implement a simple menu-entry in
> > > gnumeric that runs awk/gawk scripts.
> >
> > I hope they aren't.
> > While these are good reasons, they don't seem good enough. Currently, I haven't
> > heard of a proposed method that would actually have some security limitations.
> >
> > In order to keep security, you would need to write a gawk plugin for
> > Gnumeric, that can run a limited version of gawk. Otherwise, you're
> > running arbitrary scripts, without any limitations. While this might
> > be convenient for you, I don't see an argument that it would be good
> > in general.
> >
> > I hope that the developers implement this the RIGHT way, if they
> > implement something like this at all.
>
> I am not sure about your computer but on mine I can open a terminal
> window and run lots of different programs, most of them able to demolish
> my home directory and other things. I like it that way.
>
> As a user I am entitled to be able to demolish my stuff.
>
> Now if we were talking about macros that can run automatically, or
> function that can be recalculated automatically, I would worry about
> security implications.
>
> But a plugin that allows us to feed some portion of a sheet to an
> external command and insert the output somewhere else would be under
> control of the user. So if the user chooses to use dangerous scripts,
> s/he is entitled to do that. We don't prohibit overwriting of files from
> within Gnumeric  since the user has to approve those actions. Similarly
> we should let them run anything they like as long as they have to invoke
> it manually.
>
> Andreas
>
>
>
> --
> Andreas J. Guelzow, Professor
> Dept. of Mathematical & Computing Sciences
> Concordia University College of Alberta
>
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