← Back to context

Comment by masklinn

2 years ago

I understand Drepper pretty much considers string.h a lost cause, and I can’t fault him for that.

It’s rather that POSIX decided to add the strl functions, so adding them (and verifying their semantics) is a necessity.

A purist would support removing strcpy, etc... but that wouldn't go well, so adding an improvement is acceptable.

  • > A purist would support removing strcpy, etc...

    That is very much Drepper’s position:

    > Correct string handling means that you always know how long your strings are and therefore you can you memcpy (instead of strcpy).

    > Beside, those who are using strcat or variants deserved to be punished.

  • They should have added a warning for strcpy 20 years ago and shipped the compiler with it default enabled.