Hi, On Thu, 8 Nov 2018, Junio C Hamano wrote: > I am tempted to say "//<token>/<the remainder>" might also be such a > way, even in the POSIX world, but am not brave enough to do so, as I > suspect that may have a fallout in the Windows world X-<. It does. //server/share is the way we refer to UNC paths (AKA network drives). > An earlier suggestion by Duy in [*1*] to pretend as if we take > $VARIABLE and define special variables might be a better direction. My only qualm with this is that `$VARIABLE` is a perfectly allowed part of a path. That is, you *could* create a directory called `$VARIABLE` and reference that, and then the expand_user_path() function (or whatever name we will give it) would always expand this, with no way to switch it off. Granted, this is a highly unlikely scenario, but I would feel a bit more comfortable with something like <RUNTIME_PREFIX>/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt Of course, `<RUNTIME_PREFIX>` is *also* a perfectly valid directory name, but I would argue that it is even less likely to exist than `$RUNTIME_PREFIX` because the user would have to escape *two* characters rather than one. > Are there security implications if we started allowing references to > environment varibables in strings we pass expand_user_path()? Probably. But then, the runtime prefix is not even available as environment variable... Ciao, Dscho > If we cannot convince ourselves that it is safe to allow access to any > and all environment variables, then we probably can start by specific > "pseudo variables" under our control, like GIT_EXEC_PATH and > GIT_INSTALL_ROOT, that do not even have to be tied to environment > variables, perhaps with further restriction to allow it only at the > beginning of the string, or something like that, if necessary. > > [References] > > *1* <CACsJy8DmyU_Kn4yytu_PQdpppXO8wLcuuzQ-fjwnyjA0ntB2Dw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> >
