Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 13:08:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Garrett Wollman <wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> To: Paul Hart <hart@iserver.com> Cc: freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: OpenBSD's strlcpy(3) and strlcat(3) Message-ID: <199907151708.NAA12942@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.990715102711.19105A-100000@anchovy.orem.iserver.com> References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.990715102711.19105A-100000@anchovy.orem.iserver.com>
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<<On Thu, 15 Jul 1999 10:47:23 -0600 (MDT), Paul Hart <hart@iserver.com> said:
> The semantics of strncpy(3) and strncat(3) have struck me as warts
> on the C standard for some time. I'm not sure what debate took
> place on the standardization committee, but whatever it was seems to
> have produced some strange results.
These functions were not creations of the committee -- they have been
in C for a very long time. They (along with strncmp()) were
originally created for the purpose of dealing with `struct direct' in
Seventh Edition, which looked something like this (I've probably got
the member names wrong):
struct direct {
int d_ino;
char d_name[MAXNAMLEN];
};
The `d_name' member defined the semantics of strncpy() and strncmp().
X3J11 standardized these functions as they were.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | O Siem / We are all family / O Siem / We're all the same
wollman@lcs.mit.edu | O Siem / The fires of freedom
Opinions not those of| Dance in the burning flame
MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - Susan Aglukark and Chad Irschick
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