Feature Proposals » Detect obvious recursion in preferences variables and prevent

Motivation

A preferences variable may refer to itself by accident as follows, which causes a loop.

   * Set FOO = %FOO% bar

However, if the preferences variable contains %INCLUDE{...}% as follows, it has a magnifying effect.

   * Set FOO = %FOO% %INCLUDE{"http://server/path"}%

This should not be the end of the world. But what if a heavy database query is magnified by multiple references of %FOO% on the page?

This may cause a very heavy load to an external resource.

Description and Documentation

There is no comprehensive way to detect and avoid recursion. But an obvious ones like mentioned above can be easily detected and avoided.

It's a matter of enhancing TWiki::Prefs::PrefsCache::insert() as follows. When a self-reference is detected, it will be escaped by inserting <nop> between % and the variable name.

Examples

The following line will end up setting "%<nop>FOO% bar" rather than "%FOO% bar" to FOO.

   * Set FOO = %FOO% bar

Impact

Implementation

-- Contributors: Hideyo Imazu - 2014-10-02

Discussion

Sensible, no-brainer fix.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2014-10-02

Accepted by release meeting at KampalaReleaseMeeting2014x10x02

-- Peter Thoeny - 2014-10-04