[Python-Dev] Arbitrary non-identifier string keys when using **kwargs

[Glenn Linderman]

On 10/9/2018 7:46 PM, Chris Jerdonek wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 9, 2018 at 7:13 PM Benjamin Peterson <benjamin at python.org> wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 9, 2018, at 17:14, Barry Warsaw wrote:
>>> On Oct 9, 2018, at 16:21, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Oct 09, 2018 at 10:26:50AM -0700, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>>>>> My feeling is that limiting it to strings is fine, but checking those
>>>>> strings for resembling identifiers is pointless and wasteful.
>>>> Sure. The question is, do we have to support uses where people
>>>> intentionally smuggle non-identifier strings as keys via **kwargs?
>>> I would not be in favor of that.  I think it doesn’t make sense to be
>>> able to smuggle those in via **kwargs when it’s not supported by
>>> Python’s grammar/syntax.
>> Can anyone think of a situation where it would be advantageous for an implementation to reject non-identifier string kwargs? I can't.
> One possibility is that it could foreclose certain security bugs from
> happening. For example, if someone has an API that accepts **kwargs,
> they might have the mistaken assumption that the keys are identifiers
> without special characters like ";" etc, and so they could make the
> mistake of thinking they don't need to escape / sanitize them.
>
> --Chris
With that line of reasoning, one should make sure the data are 
identifiers too :)
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