Tell HN: C Experts Panel – Ask us anything about C

Re:Tell HN: C Experts Panel – Ask us anything about C by rseacord on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @12:34PM (#22868009)

Microsoft originally implemented the Annex K Bounds checked interfaces (e.g., the *_s functions) back in the 1990s in response to well-publicized vulnerabilities. They proposed standardization to the C Standards committee. The committee made many changes to the proposal, possibly going too far away from the original implementation. During this time, I would say that Microsoft was very differential to the wishes of the committee.

By the time the ISO/IEC TR 24731-1:2007 was released, and then later Annex K added to the C Standard, Microsoft had to decide if they wanted to change the interfaces to conform to the changed standard and re-implement their code bases. They presumably decided that they did not, which I think is a defensible decision.

As to unergonomic, examples please?

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Re:Tell HN: C Experts Panel – Ask us anything about C by loeg on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @02:21AM (#22875119)

I think we are in agreement that Microsoft does not implement Annex K as specified in ISO C. I don't fault them for that; I wouldn't either.

As to unergonomic, that's somewhat subjective. But I'm a long-time C practitioner and that's my feel of the API. Constraint handlers are a mistake. Ambient state that is not part of the function interface, as well as asynchronous interaction, make for poor APIs. Constraint handlers are a mismatch for library use of safe functions, as well as kernel environments.

Most functions seem pointless; e.g., snprintf_s. Re-adding gets() in the form of gets_s() seems unhelpful. Why bsearch_s, qsort_s, memcpy_s/memmove_s?? Do you really think strerror_s() is useful? Or strnlen_s()?

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