Safe coding practices (was Re: Bug in users command)

[Tom Christiansen]

>From the keyboard of chip at tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg):
:According to schwartz at groucho.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz):
:>Happily, Chris Torek's new 4.4BSD stdio provides a way to
:>read lines of any length using ``fgetline''.
:
:BSD isn't the world; fixing 4.4BSD won't help me.

It's not the world, but it's a start.  Do you have a scheme for fixing
everything everywhere simultaneously?  It's a hard problem.  (I often wish
RTM's Internet worm had gone around fixing broken code: the ultimate
update engine. :-)

:Each site (or programmer) needs to write fgetline() or its moral
:equivalent using getc(), malloc() and realloc(), and use it every time
:gets() or fgets() would have been used.

Ug.  If it's written once, published, and made available for use free
of charge *and* without viral strings attached, each site or programmer
won't have to re-invent the wheel.  Of course, sites without source are
still largely at the mercy of vendors.

--tom
--
Still waiting to read alt.fan.dan-bernstein using DBWM, Dan's own AI
window manager, which argues with you 10 weeks before resizing your window.
    Tom Christiansen	tchrist at convex.com	convex!tchrist