Re:Why Zig over C for Systems Programming
by dleslie on Friday November 13, 2026 @10:17AM
(#50484783)
If errors like this are acceptable because of the version number of an otherwise decade old project, then that's ample evidence of why Zig is not ready and should not be used for any software that needs surety.
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Re:Why Zig over C for Systems Programming
by nvme0n1p1 on Friday November 13, 2026 @10:23AM
(#50484873)
When you're setting expectations about a project, it's never a bad idea to listen to the creators themselves.
https://ziglang.org/download/0.17.0/release-notes.html
> Zig has known bugs, miscompilations, and regressions.
> Even with Zig 0.17.x, working on a non-trivial project using Zig may require participating in the development process.
> When Zig reaches 1.0.0, Tier 1 support will gain a bug policy as an additional requirement.
Re:Why Zig over C for Systems Programming
by stateoff on Friday November 13, 2026 @10:25AM
(#50484925)
https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2026/06/05/why-zig-isn-t-1-0...
I did not say it's acceptable, just not catastrophic, especially since workarounds exist.
I've used zig in similar capacity in production in the past and personally I would take the slowdown just to avoid dealing with MSVC :)
Re:Why Zig over C for Systems Programming
by Joker_vD on Friday November 13, 2026 @10:27AM
(#50484936)
You know that GNU libc to this day essentially calls strlen() on every call to sscanf(), which is pretty much the same issue? And that this behaviour, present in many other implementations of standard C library (including Microsoft's), was responsible for e.g. slow JSON parsing in some very popular online games [0]? Does that mean glibc is still not production-ready?
Re:Why Zig over C for Systems Programming
by dleslie on Friday November 13, 2026 @10:49AM
(#50485258)
sscanf is quadratic in the worst case, and has been flagged along with the rest of the libc string support as being harmful. Its continued existence is for compatibility, but new projects should not use it.
Re:Why Zig over C for Systems Programming
by Joker_vD on Friday November 13, 2026 @12:39PM
(#50486917)
First of all, sscanf doesn't need to be quadratic in the worst case; it absolutely can work without finding the NUL-terminator first. Second, I'd like to see that list of "flagged along with the bulk of the rest of the libc string support as being hazardous or potentially harmful" functions. Does this list include strchr()? Because if yes, your original argument fails to stand.