Re: m_getfld (was Re: [Nmh-workers] Wishlist: Extracting Attachments from Email.)

[Jon Steinhart]

> Jon Steinhart wrote:
> >Fear of m_getfld has kept me from trying this.
> 
> It's not that dreadful, is it? I grant you that it sticks its
> hands deep into the guts of the C library in a dreadfully unclean
> manner, but if you're just using it it's not too bad.
> 
> Is there any consensus for ripping out the code that knows about libc
> innards in favour of using actual standard interfaces now that copying data
> isn't so expensive? I think that would make that file much easier to
> maintain, and reduce porting issues and avoid potential breakage if the libc
> interface changes (or if the GNU folks find some way to restrict programs to
> the public APIs).
> 
> -- PMM

It's not the dreadfulness that's the issue to me.  It's that while I think that
I know 90% of what m_getfld does, I'm sure that I'd break something if I tried
to replace it.  Unfortunately, none of the voluminous comments in the code say
what it does; they just talk about why it shouldn't be altered.  I'd be glad to
take a crack at it if someone could accurately document the routine.

Jon