In message <199907152244.paa01...@dingo.cdrom.com> Mike Smith writes: : What's really stupid is that most of the time you're trying to use : these functions to fix code that looks like: : strcpy(buf, str1); : strcat(buf, str2); : strcat(buf, str3); : without overflowing buf. This is dumb! Use asprintf instead: : : asprinf(&buf, "%s%s%s", str1, str2, str3); : : If you can't keep all of the string elements together at once, try: : : asprinf(&buf, "%s%s", str1, str2); : ... : asprintf(&buf2, "%s%s", buf, str3); : free(buf); : : No, it's not fast, but it _is_ robust.
That is true for this case, but not always true. I think these APIs have an excellent role to play. Sure, there are other ways to do it, but there are a growing number of systems that have strl* on them (OpenBSD, Linux and Solaris), which is reason enough to improve our portability by using them. The asprintf isn't completely robust becuase you must free() the routine, or face a memory leak. It won't overflow, but it might introduce another bug. The whole point of these APIs was to transition old code to new in a safe manner that isn't prone to potentiall programming errors. Warner To Unsubscribe: send mail to majord...@freebsd.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
