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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!mcvax!boring!jack
From: jack@boring.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Need strnlen().
Message-ID: <6691@boring.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Nov-85 20:13:55 EST
Article-I.D.: boring.6691
Posted: Fri Nov 15 20:13:55 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 17-Nov-85 06:59:34 EST
References: <207@a.sei.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: jack@boring.UUCP (Jack Jansen)
Organization: AMOEBA project, CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 19
Apparently-To: rnews@mcvax.LOCAL

In article <207@a.sei.cmu.edu> dlc@a.sei.cmu.edu (Daryl Clevenger) writes:
>One should never allow a character array to not have a null terminating byte.
That's right, one *should* never allow it. On the other hand,
if ou look at the format of /etc/utmp (v7, at least, dunno about
4.n or S5), there's 8 bytes available for loginnames, so if
you've got an 8 char loginname, it won't be zero terminated.

Or, look at the V7 directory entry for a 14-char filename.

I *know* these should be avoided, but I would still prefer to see
code like
	len = strnlen(buffer,BUFSIZ);
above
	if( (len=strlen(buffer))>BUFSIZ) len=BUFSIZ;
which will fail at some unknown point in the future, long
after everyone who knew the code has passed away.......
-- 
	Jack Jansen, jack@mcvax.UUCP
	The shell is my oyster.