From: Pierre Uszynski <pierre@shell.portal.com>
Date: Sun, 18 Sep 94 21:45:29 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: privacy in Unix environment
Message-ID: <199409190445.VAA19813@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> From: chen@intuit.com (Mark Chen)
> 
> > I'm looking for some kind of utility that will allow script files
> > to be run, to spawn off processes, but will wipe out environment
> > and "ps" info from being read. i.e. imagine that the commands
> > being called must shield their arguments and environment from [ps].
> 
> Perl might be a good alternative.  You get to perform fairly
> high-level functions without spawning additional shells.

Perl lets you manipulate files and directories, and perform functions
like 'sort' and all the pattern matching you would expect (and more)
without leaving the language. It also provides the hooks to change the
apparent command name when you run an external command (ps will see
that name). But Perl does not let you mask the arguments of such a
command, at least not that I know of.  I'd say, for whatever you get to
write, don't pass arguments on the command line, but in files or
through pipes, and for what you can't control, work with meaningless
temporary file names:  arg1, arg2, arg3...  Before, and after you are
done, change the file names to the real thing using Perl scripts.

As for command line switches... I have no idea.

Pierre.
pierre@shell.portal.com