Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Fri, 16 Jul 1999 02:12:35 +0200
From:      Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@uunet.co.za>
To:        Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
Cc:        Warner Losh <imp@village.org>, Paul Hart <hart@iserver.com>, freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: OpenBSD's strlcpy(3) and strlcat(3) 
Message-ID:  <81297.932083955@axl.noc.iafrica.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 15 Jul 1999 18:05:06 CST." <4.2.0.58.19990715180119.04723d20@localhost> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help


On Thu, 15 Jul 1999 18:05:06 CST, Brett Glass wrote:

> A more consistent way to do it would be to have the function return zero
> if the programmer opted not to know about any shortfall.

That'd break code that doesn't expect to have to pass the additional
argument that we've opted to allow for.

> Or, even better, ALWAYS return the shortfall. The programmer can then
> discard the return value if he's really willing to ignore it (perhaps
> at his peril).

Reality check: we're talking about portability here. If we take these
functions into our own libc, we really should make them work as expected
on other platforms. However, there's nothing to stop us extending them
beyond those expectations.

What I'm getting at here is that, while the strl* functions may be nice
(and Mike Smith's arguments are casting some serious doubt over that
idea) they could certainly be nicer. At least two other vendors already
have a defined API for the functions. If we use them, we shouldn't break
that API. What I propose doesn't, put it does allow for more convenient
use of the functions.

Ciao,
Sheldon.


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?81297.932083955>