If all you are looking for is an exact match (which I think you are), you're better off using index.

Abigail

0 out of 4 - c:/win32app/toolkit - regexp value :
1 out of 4 - c:/winnt - regexp value :
2 out of 4 - C:/WINNT/system32 - regexp value :
3 out of 4 - d:/perl - regexp value :
4 out of 4 - d:/brossad - regexp value :
[download]

my @bannedF = ('c:/win32app/toolkit',     
            'c:/winnt',
            'C:/WINNT/system32',            
            'd:/perl',
            'd:/brossad');

my $folder = 'c:/TEMP/sdfs';



for (0..$#bannedF)
   {
      return BANNED if ($folder eq $bannedF[$_]);   
        # if folder is directly equal to a banned folder
      if ($mode == INC_SUBDIRS) 
        # if a parent folder is banned then so are the subfolders unle
+ss otherwise stated
      {
         $folder =~ /^($bannedF[$_]).*/;
         print "$_ out of $#bannedF - $bannedF[$_] - regexp value : $1
+\n";
         return BANNED if ($1); 
            # example : $folder = c:\temp\one; $bannedF[$_] = c:\temp
      }
   }
[download]

I would suggest also cleaning up your code as follows:

 
foreach my $banned ( @bannedF ) { 
  return BANNED if ( $folder eq $banned ); 

  if( $mode == INC_SUBDIRS ) { 
     $folder =~ /^($banned).*/; 
     print "$_ out of $#bannedF - $banned - regex value: $1\n";
     return BANNED if ($1); 
  }
}
[download]

-----------------------------------
Frank Wiles <frank@wiles.org>
http://frank.wiles.org

If you've got it to work by now, may I point out a couple of possible problems (if you deliberately glided over these issues in the interests of simplicity, I apologise in advance :).

(NB: I assume, for the sake of argument, that you are prompting a user to enter (a full filepath to) a directory, and then letting them do something with this directory unless it is on the 'banned' list.)

1. Windoze filenames are case-INsensitive. So as well as banning 'd:/perl' you need to ban 'D:/Perl', etc. This is of course easy to solve.

2. You generally need to check for the user entering 'd:/perl/' and 'd:/perl\' (or 'd:perl\\' etc) as well as 'd:/perl'. This is easy to solve too.

3. If there is any chance of you needing to ban the current directory (where the code is being executed) and/or its parent, you should check for the user entering '.' or '..' (best, probably, to put them in your 'banned' list).

4. Concerning the following lines of your code:

$folder =~ /^($bannedF[$_]).*/;
return BANNED if ($1);
[download]

I'm not sure what it does. If it is simplified to:

the problem becomes more apparent, namely that if you ban for example 'c:/win', you are also banning folders such as 'c:/wings', 'c:/winter_weather' etc. One way to solve this would be to ban anything that starts with 'c:/win/' (having stripped out spurious trailing slashes as under point 2 above).

There are no doubt other 'security' problems than those listed above, and more checking of user input is certainly required. However, this is how I'd do it if security weren't a vital issue:

hth

dave

Hi N_A_N,

Thanks for all your ideas ! They've helped me quite a bit and I'm still working on the script...

Here are a couple answers to your remarks :
• First of all, I'm not prompting the user for a path : when a change occurs on the drive, a function returns the path where that change occured...
• Yes I do need to check for capital letters - actually, I noticed when comparing 2 paths that were the same except for the drive letter - in one case I had c:\, in the other C:\. So I rewrote my if statement to if (uc($folder) eq uc($wantedF$_)).
• Furthermore, as for the "c:/temp" and the "c:\temp" paths, I also rewrote a bit of code that searches for \\ and swaps it for \/ :

  while ($folder =~ /\\/)
     {
        $folder =~ s/\\/\//; 
     }
  [download]

• You ask whether the current folder can be banned : yes it can but it's irrelevant. Banning in this case means not considering any changes happening in that folder, hence ignoring it. This is not a security issue...
• As for the regex, yeah I must admit it, I totally missed it - don't know what I was thinking... Your version is the one intended. Thanks !
Thanks so much for your help and time - it's been quite useful to me...

Here's my latest code up-to-date cleaned-up and functional...



sub compareFolder
{
   my $folder = shift;
   $folder = uc ($folder);
   while ($folder =~ /\\/)
   {
      $folder =~ s/\\/\//; # transform regular c:\sample\path into c:/
+sample/path for later comparison
   }
   
   my $mode = shift;
   my @wantedF = @{+shift};
   my @bannedF = @{+shift};
   
   for (0..$#wantedF)
   {
      return ACCEPTED if ($folder eq uc($wantedF[$_])); # if folder is
+ directly equal to a desired(forced) folder
   }
   
   for (0..$#bannedF)
   {
      return BANNED if ($folder eq uc($bannedF[$_]));   # if folder is
+ directly equal to a banned folder
      if ($mode == INC_SUBDIRS) # if a parent folder is banned then so
+ are the subfolders unless otherwise stated
      {
         my $bFolder = uc($bannedF[$_]);
         return BANNED if ($folder =~ /(^$bFolder\/).*/); # example : 
+$folder = c:\temp\one; $bannedF[$_] = c:\temp
      }
   }
   
   return ACCEPTED; # if execution reaches this point, then folder isn
+'t affected by the forced/banned folder list
               # hence it can be scanned.
}
[download]


Thanks for your help and insight...

@bannedF = ("c:\\win32app\\toolkit",
            
            "c:\\winnt",
            "C:\\WINNT\\system32",
            
            "d:\\perl",
            "d:\\brossad");
[download]

@bannedF = qw( c:/win32app/toolkit c:/winnt C:/WINNT/system32 d:/perl 
+d:/brossad );
[download]

0 out of 4 - c:\win32app\toolkit - regexp value : 
1 out of 4 - c:\win32 - regexp value : 
2 out of 4 - C:\WINNT\system32 - regexp value : 
3 out of 4 - d:\perl - regexp value : 
4 out of 4 - d:\brossad - regexp value : 

Tool completed successfully