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Date:      Thu, 15 Jul 1999 17:41:35 -0700
From:      "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>
To:        Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@uunet.co.za>
Cc:        Warner Losh <imp@village.org>, Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, Paul Hart <hart@iserver.com>, freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: OpenBSD's strlcpy(3) and strlcat(3) 
Message-ID:  <3803.932085695@zippy.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 16 Jul 1999 02:25:16 %2B0200." <81512.932084716@axl.noc.iafrica.com> 

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> Cool, so now I face that icky sticky problem of "who first". Rather than
> hoping that an implementation of an extension will be backported to the
> platform of origin, I need to contact the vendor of that platform.

Naw, I think this is REALLY SIMPLE and very definitely unworth the
length of this thread so far.  Not that "proper defensive coding" is
an unworthy topic in its own right, and perhaps we should all have
that discussion again some time, but it's not immediately germin to
the issue of whether or not to bring the OpenBSD strlcpy()/strlcat()
routines in.

I'd say that's a decision made on simple compatibility grounds and if
X or more sister OSen have already adopted them into their libc, where
X is a positive integer greater than or equal to 2, then it's a
foregone conclusion that apps writers will begin using them and we
should provide compatibility. Unvarnished, uncomplicated, just a 100%
compatible implementation with the standard that OpenBSD has already
set.

Now if other security mavens have their own ideas about a much better
family of additions to libc which promote even better and secure
programming practices, by all means knock yourselves out in producing
this family of routines and maybe even someday the man pages for these
first OpenBSD efforts can bear the "SUPERSEDED BY" tag. :-) Until
then, let's kindly not debate this particular bike shelter into the
ground.

- Jordan


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