Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 00:03:20 +1030 (CST) From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> To: gurney_j@resnet.uoregon.edu Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org, dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu Subject: Re: seg fault and strlen Message-ID: <199603091333.AAA13154@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960309013951.7129A-100000@nike.efn.org> from "John-Mark Gurney" at Mar 9, 96 01:41:26 am
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John-Mark Gurney stands accused of saying: > > I'm not sure this is the best place to put it... but is it ok for strlen > to seg fault your program when you pass a null pointer to it? just > wondering... TTYL... This one's been done nearly to death in the past. 8) The answer is, yes. It's illegal to pass a null pointer to strlen. A nonexistent string does not have a length, and it's an error for your program to try to determine it. Library functions shouldn't be doing your error checking for you. If they did, performance would suck. As designer of your code, you are in the best position to determine where error conditions may occur, and to trap them appropriately.. If you want to argue about this, go to comp.lang.c, and fish out the ol' asbestos 8) > John-Mark -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039 [[ ]] Collector of old Unix hardware. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[
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