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authorAntoine Pitrou <solipsis@pitrou.net>2012-08-01 12:53:16 (GMT)
committerAntoine Pitrou <solipsis@pitrou.net>2012-08-01 12:53:16 (GMT)
commit0209dc1ff622116004b5e130f37bfa070749b26f (patch)
tree26c08021f6580d48a43cd740ede52a14c9db337f /Doc/using
parenta562ed012d70ad21320c468042ad9da19832cf18 (diff)
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Clarify that hash randomization is on by default
Diffstat (limited to 'Doc/using')
-rw-r--r--Doc/using/cmdline.rst33
1 files changed, 16 insertions, 17 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/using/cmdline.rst b/Doc/using/cmdline.rst
index b14f370..8864b79 100644
--- a/Doc/using/cmdline.rst
+++ b/Doc/using/cmdline.rst
@@ -229,23 +229,22 @@ Miscellaneous options
.. cmdoption:: -R
- Turn on hash randomization, so that the :meth:`__hash__` values of str, bytes
- and datetime objects are "salted" with an unpredictable random value.
- Although they remain constant within an individual Python process, they are
- not predictable between repeated invocations of Python.
-
- This is intended to provide protection against a denial-of-service caused by
- carefully-chosen inputs that exploit the worst case performance of a dict
- construction, O(n^2) complexity. See
+ Kept for compatibility. On Python 3.3 and greater, hash randomization is
+ turned on by default.
+
+ On previous versions of Python, this option turns on hash randomization,
+ so that the :meth:`__hash__` values of str, bytes and datetime
+ are "salted" with an unpredictable random value. Although they remain
+ constant within an individual Python process, they are not predictable
+ between repeated invocations of Python.
+
+ Hash randomization is intended to provide protection against a
+ denial-of-service caused by carefully-chosen inputs that exploit the worst
+ case performance of a dict construction, O(n^2) complexity. See
http://www.ocert.org/advisories/ocert-2011-003.html for details.
- Changing hash values affects the order in which keys are retrieved from a
- dict. Although Python has never made guarantees about this ordering (and it
- typically varies between 32-bit and 64-bit builds), enough real-world code
- implicitly relies on this non-guaranteed behavior that the randomization is
- disabled by default.
-
- See also :envvar:`PYTHONHASHSEED`.
+ :envvar:`PYTHONHASHSEED` allows you to set a fixed value for the hash
+ seed secret.
.. versionadded:: 3.2.3
@@ -486,8 +485,8 @@ These environment variables influence Python's behavior.
.. envvar:: PYTHONHASHSEED
- If this variable is set to ``random``, a random value is used to seed the
- hashes of str, bytes and datetime objects.
+ If this variable is not set or set to ``random``, a random value is used
+ to seed the hashes of str, bytes and datetime objects.
If :envvar:`PYTHONHASHSEED` is set to an integer value, it is used as a fixed
seed for generating the hash() of the types covered by the hash