[Qemu-devel] [PATCH 4/5] CODING_STYLE: add string management rules

[Blue Swirl]

Add string management rules, somewhat like libvirt HACKING.

Signed-off-by: Blue Swirl <address@hidden>
---
 CODING_STYLE |   24 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 files changed, 24 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/CODING_STYLE b/CODING_STYLE
index 085c86f..b230a01 100644
--- a/CODING_STYLE
+++ b/CODING_STYLE
@@ -156,3 +156,27 @@ Use of the malloc/free/realloc/calloc APIs is not
allowed in the QEMU
 codebase. Instead of these routines, use the replacement
 qemu_malloc/qemu_mallocz/qemu_realloc/qemu_free or
 qemu_vmalloc/qemu_memalign/qemu_vfree APIs.
+
+8. 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)
+
+Don't use strcat because it can't check for buffer overflows, but:
+char *pstrcat(char *buf, int buf_size, const char *s)
+
+The same limitation exists with sprintf and vsprintf, so use snprintf and
+vsnprintf.
+
+QEMU provides other useful string functions:
+int strstart(const char *str, const char *val, const char **ptr)
+int stristart(const char *str, const char *val, const char **ptr)
+int qemu_strnlen(const char *s, int max_len)
+
+There are also replacement character processing macros for isxyz and toxyz,
+so instead of e.g. isalnum you should use qemu_isalnum.
+
+Because of the memory management rules, you must use qemu_strdup/qemu_strndup
+instead of plain strdup/strndup.
-- 
1.6.2.4