Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Emgergency release of tla-1.2.1pre1

[Tom Lord]

    > From: Aaron Bentley <address@hidden>
    > Tom Lord wrote:

    >>> It would be better to copy only `n - 1' real characters in the
    >>> case of an overflow, so that the final `\0' makes `n'.

    >> That just shifts around the bugs and resulting exploits.  There
    >> is no such thing as safe, easy-to-use, non-allocating
    >> string-algebra primitives.

    > The current interface is a surprising one, as noted in the
    > warning.  People like me don't read the inline hackerlab docs to
    > find these things out.  I'd rather have hackerlab as
    > POSIX-with-all-the-warts than have to look up every function
    > because it may differ from POSIX.

That would be a different project.  Hackerlab is intended, among other
things, to clean up (what I see) as some of the warts of the standard
C library and unix interfaces.  (It is, in many (but not all)
respects, ultimately a subjective/aesthetic exercise, of course.)

This particular function is a minor issue but, in general, cleaning up
lots of the glitches makes it easier to cleanly add higher-level
functionality to hackerlab.

(About your "[having to look up every function] because it may differ
from Posix" .... already, hackerlab has many functions that Posix
lacks.   The small subset that are very similar will continue to
diminish as a percentage of the overall library.  It doesn't take that
many dives for the manual (you know it's printable and browsable, not
just inline comments, right?) to get it.)

-t