Salut!

Don

As your utility gets more complicated to implement, the “just get it done” productivity gains of the dynamic languages like perl, python, and ruby can be a large boon.

Also noteworthy, if your code is used on a daily basis or is iterated through thousands of times, the time saved implementing in dynamic code vs. waiting for it to finish executing can be substantial.

For a malware researcher / binary analyst though, it is highly beneficial to have a baseline understanding of such a fundamental and relatively simple language like C. It greatly increases your understand of the more complicated aspects of operating systems and their security.

I recently read an excellent book on C. It will help anyone who wants to develop a really thorough understanding of the core language. I recommend “Beginning C: From Novice to Professional” By Ivor Horton / Apress.

You can actually preview entire book here: http://books.google.com/books?q=beginning+c+from+n...sional

I would agree with you that it is largely semantics in regards to the difference between programming and scripting. It has always been enjoyable the times that I have studied C in an effort to further my skills in it. At times an infuriating challenge, but that is what makes it fun In my case I think I need to go to a brick and mortar school and take a formal class. Though it is pretty much impossible to find a course in C nowadays as everything is object oriented in the guise of Java and C++.

All that said, I would say though that scripting is the more important skill to have for a network security professional. Would you agree? Reason being is that it is unlikely that one would have to write an app from scratch to perform a function that could likely also be mirrored in PERL or Python. Your thoughts?

Thanks for taking the time to write,

Don

The difference between “programming” and scripting is really a semantic argument with respect to perl and python. Perhaps if you were using a shell script I would agree.

To mirror the perl functionality in your nice article using the C “programming” language, I only needed to do one extra step; delcare variables.

gcc.exe -o findIP.exe programming_example.c

programming_example.c:

#include
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
FILE *in;
FILE *out;
char line[1024];
char match[] = “192.168.1.102″;

if ((in = fopen(argv[1],”r”)) == NULL) {
printf(”err - could not open input %s\n”,argv[1]);
return 1;
}

if ((out = fopen(”articleoutput”,”w”)) == NULL) {
printf(”err - could not open output file %s\ns”,”articleoutput”);
return 1;
}

while (fgets(line, 1024, in) != NULL) {
if (strstr(line,match))
fprintf(out,line,”%s\n”);
}

fclose(in);
fclose(out);

return 0;
}