Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!decvax!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: modification of strings
Message-ID: <11711@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 8 Feb 89 20:39:24 GMT
References: <7429@csli.STANFORD.EDU> <466@oglvee.UUCP>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 14

In article <466@oglvee.UUCP> norm@oglvee.UUCP (Norman Joseph) writes:
>[The previous example overflows,] but what if the code looked like this:
>                char *blah = "meow\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0";
>                strcpy( blah, "grr, snarl, hiss" );
>assuming that you could write to the space into which `blah' pointed?

You'd better also assume that string literals are not shared.  Even so, you
may be in for a surprise when you execute this code fragment the second time,
and find that blah[0]=='g' immediately after the initialization to
(apparently) "meow".

This kludge is confusing and unportable.  Don't use it.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint