gdb/python: restrict the names accepted by gdb.register_window_type

I noticed that, from Python, I could register a new TUI window that
had whitespace in its name, like this:

  gdb.register_window_type('my window', MyWindowType)

however, it is not possible to then use this window in a new TUI
layout, e.g.:

  (gdb) tui new-layout foo my window 1 cmd 1
  Unknown window "my"
  (gdb) tui new-layout foo "my window" 1 cmd 1
  Unknown window ""my"
  (gdb) tui new-layout foo my\ window 1 cmd 1
  Unknown window "my\"

GDB clearly uses the whitespace to split the incoming command line.

I could fix this by trying to add a mechanism by which we can use
whitespace within a window name, but it seems like an easier solution
if we just forbid whitespace within a window name.  Not only is this
easier, but I think this is probably the better solution, identifier
names with spaces in would mean we'd need to audit all the places a
window name could be printed and ensure that the use of a space didn't
make the output ambiguous.

So, having decided to disallow whitespace, I then thought about other
special characters.  We currently accept anything as a window name,
and I wondered if this was a good idea.

My concerns were about how special characters used in a window name
might cause confusion, for example, we allow '$' in window names,
which is maybe fine now, but what if one day we wanted to allow
variable expansion when creating new layouts?  Or what about starting
a window name with '-'?  We already support a '-horizontal' option,
what if we want to add more in the future?  Or use of the special
character '{' which has special meaning within a new layout?

In the end I figured it might make sense to place some restrictive
rules in place, and then relax the rules later if/when users complain,
we can consider each relaxation as its requested.

So, I propose that window names should match this regular expression:

  [a-zA-Z][-_.a-zA-Z0-9]*

There is a chance that there is user code in the wild which will break
with the addition of this change, but hopefully adapting to the new
restrictions shouldn't be too difficult.
This commit is contained in:
Andrew Burgess 2022-09-14 13:51:28 +01:00
parent 9c5f314314
commit 7abc6ec0a6
4 changed files with 105 additions and 1 deletions

View file

@ -6597,7 +6597,9 @@ factory function with @value{GDBN}.
@var{name} is the name of the new window. It's an error to try to
replace one of the built-in windows, but other window types can be
replaced.
replaced. The @var{name} should match the regular expression
@code{[a-zA-Z][-_.a-zA-Z0-9]*}, it is an error to try and create a
window with an invalid name.
@var{function} is a factory function that is called to create the TUI
window. This is called with a single argument of type