Git's list of banned C functions

Re:Git's list of banned C functions by coliveira on Thursday March 04, 2021 @05:53PM (#26349651)

Null terminated strings are remnants of an era when computers had little memory available. So, at the time it seemed smart to discard the length field and use a single byte-sized terminator (null). If you are writing an operating system for a machine with little memory to spare, this seems like a good decision. Of course things are very different now when memory is not a problem and the goal is safety.

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Re:Git's list of banned C functions by a1369209993 on Friday March 05, 2021 @02:21AM (#26353839)

> If you are writing an operating system for a machine with little memory to spare, this seems like a good decision.

Also registers! Especially in syscall interface, consider eg:

  int renameat(int olddirfd,char* oldpath,int newdirfd,char* newpath); /* first example I found that had 2 paths */

If you have registers edx,ecx,esi,edi,ebx available, nul-terminated strings make this fit into:

  edx olddirfd,ecx oldpath,
  esi newdirfd,edi newpath

If you need separate length fields, there simply aren't enough registers:

  edx olddirfd,ecx oldpath.ptr,esi oldpath.len,
  edi newdirfd,ebx newpath.ptr,??? newpath.len

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Re:Git's list of banned C functions by scoutt on Friday March 05, 2021 @03:49AM (#26354498)

> memory is not a problem and the goal is safety.

People keep repeating this. What about embedded systems? For instance, I have to know how an object is structured and how is allocated, exactly and without surprises. The behavior has to be predictable and as simple and fast as possible. You can (likely) achieve that with C.

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