strlcpy() in glibc

Posted Sep 19, 2014 9:11 UTC (Fri) by epa (subscriber, #39769)
In reply to: strlcpy() in glibc by Koromix
Parent article: Adding strlcpy() to glibc

Is there some cheat sheet of "don't use this, use that instead" for C string functions? Too many people just reach for strcpy by default and aren't aware of stpcpy; and so on.

strlcpy() in glibc

Posted Sep 19, 2014 23:34 UTC (Fri) by Koromix (subscriber, #71455) [Link]

None that I know of. When I manipulate dynamic raw C strings I go for one of these:
- asprintf is great, you can't abuse it
- malloc + a suite of stpcpy
- strdup (with in-place characters substitutions on the copy if needed, such as fixing slashes in paths)

I almost never use strcat because stpcpy is more efficient.

This is enough when your code does little string handling (some identifiers, a few paths here and there). Beyond that, it's inefficient and insecure and you better use another language (C++) or at the very least a higher-level string handling code/library.

Note that for cross-platform code you may need to provide fallback implementations of asprintf and stpcpy/stpncpy.