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[PATCHv2,22/22] doc: update HACKING wrt strncpy/pstrcpy

Message ID 1338364001-13892-23-git-send-email-jim@meyering.net
State New
Headers show

Commit Message

Jim Meyering May 30, 2012, 7:46 a.m. UTC 
From: Jim Meyering <meyering@redhat.com>

Reword the section on strncpy: its NUL-filling is important
in some cases.  Mention that pstrcpy's signature is different.

Signed-off-by: Jim Meyering <meyering@redhat.com>
---
 HACKING | 9 +++++----
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
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Patch

diff --git a/HACKING b/HACKING
index 471cf1d..dddd617 100644
--- a/HACKING
+++ b/HACKING
@@ -91,10 +91,11 @@  emulators.

 4. String manipulation

-Do not use the strncpy function.  According to the man page, it does
-*not* guarantee a NULL-terminated buffer, which makes it extremely dangerous
-to use.  Instead, use functionally equivalent function:
-void pstrcpy(char *buf, int buf_size, const char *str)
+Do not use the strncpy function.  As mentioned in the man page, it does *not*
+guarantee a NULL-terminated buffer, which makes it extremely dangerous to use.
+It also zeros trailing destination bytes out to the specified length.  Instead,
+use this similar function when possible, but note its different signature:
+void pstrcpy(char *dest, int dest_buf_size, const char *src)

 Don't use strcat because it can't check for buffer overflows, but:
 char *pstrcat(char *buf, int buf_size, const char *s)