13 Nov
2019
13 Nov
'19
12:45 a.m.
Robert Clausecker writes:
Oh please no. One of the things we've hopefully
all learned from Pascal
is that length-prefixed strings suck because you can't perform anything
useful without copying the entire string. Rob Pike and friends showed
how to get strings and vectors right in the Go language where you have a
builtin slice type which is essentially a structure
struct slice(type) {
type *data;
size_t len, cap;
};
where data points to a buffer, len is the length of meaningful data in
that buffer and cap is the total buffer size. This allows the language
to take subslices and to append to existing slices without requiring
copies in most cases. If a copy is necessary, the runtime can allocate
a slightly larger buffer in advance to allow for appending in amortised
linear time.
Overall, much more versatile than Pascal strings.
But let's get back to the topic, after all I promised not to flame as
much as J�rg did.
Yours,
Robert Clausecker
On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 02:14:18PM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 02:10:46PM -0800, Bakul Shah wrote:
> > On Tue, 12 Nov 2019 15:56:15 -0500 Norman Wilson <norman(a)oclsc.org>
wrote:
> > >
> > > My longer-term reaction was to completely drop my sloppy
> > > old habit (common in those days not just in my code but in
> > > that of many others) of ignoring possible buffer overflows.
> > > I find it mind-boggling that people still make that mistake;
> > > it has been literal decades since the lesson was rubbed in
> > > our community's collective noses. I am very disappointed
> > > that programming education seems not to care enough about
> > > this sort of thing, even today.
> >
> > Unfortunately strcpy & other buffer overflow friendly
> > functions are still present in the C standard (I am looking at
> > n2434.pdf, draft of Sept 25, 2019). Is C really not fixable?
>
> Someone needs to do Strcpy() etc that have the length in the
> first bytes[s] of the string.
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
OK, been biting my tongue here. I, for one, appreciate the fact that
it's still legal to purchase and use power tools. I like being able
to use my chainsaw to cut up a tree without having to measure it first.
And I don't have a variety of tree here that contains its length at the
base. Sure, things can go wrong; I have a scar on one leg to prove it.
But that just shows that I need to be more careful, not that I need to
try logging with a safety razor.
C strings were great at the time, and are still great, especially in
very small systems. Go may be nicer in larger systems but I probably
wouldn't want the overhead in a small embedded system. The length at
the start of a string has its issues too; do you want to consume 8
bytes at the start of each string on a 64-bit machine, or have strings
that can support different lengths and have to deal with converting
between them?
Programming isn't a good place for careless people. I recognize that
what passes for "software technology" these days is coming up with
mechanisms that minimize the damage that can be done by unskilled
people. But it's never gonna work. Sure, you can replace pointer
problems with reference problems and so on, but that doesn't really
solve anything.
So let's not rehash our favorite arguments about strings until Warren
shuts down the discussion. Use that energy to get out there and teach
people to be better and more careful programmers.
Jon