Re: Specification for Trusted PLs?

On May 21, 2010, at 18:26 , Stephen Frost wrote:
> * David Fetter (david@fetter.org) wrote:
>> These need to be testable conditions, and new tests need to get added
>> any time we find that we've missed something.  Making this concept
>> fuzzier is exactly the wrong direction to go.
> 
> I'm really not sure that we want to be in the business of writing a ton
> of regression tests to see if languages which claim to be trusted really
> are..


Well, testing software security via regression tests certainly is sounds intriguing. But unfortunately, it's impossible also AFAICS - it'd amount to testing for the *absence* of features, which seems hard...

I suggest the following definition of "trusted PL".
"While potentially preventing excruciating pain, saving tons of sweat and allowing code reuse, actually adds nothing in terms of features over pl/pgsql".

best regards,
Florian Pflug