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C Strings and my slow descent to madness

deusinmachina.net

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Re: C Strings and my slow descent to madness

#11

Post by gavinhoward »

Okay, I agree that by default, C strings are bad.

But it doesn't have to stay that way. Someone else in the comments mentioned antirez's sds library for dynamic strings. This works, but you could also easily roll your own. All you need is an init function, and perhaps an assert or other check at the end of it that the string has a nul terminator.

At that point, type checking will let you blindly pass those strings (or their char arrays) to any of those C functions without worry.

Edit: I'll also add that I think a string library should have a difference between static strings and string builders (dynamic strings). It makes everything easier.

Re: C Strings and my slow descent to madness

#12

Post by felipemnoa »

_benj wrote: post #5

With the woes of string.h being known, why not just use an alternative like https://github.com/antirez/sds ? I’ve also been having a blast with C because writing C feels like being a god! But the biggest thing that I like about C is that the world is sort of written on it! Just yesterday I needed to parse a JSON… found a bunch of libraries that do that and just picked one that I liked the API.

>>I’ve also been having a blast with C because writing C feels like being a god

Not trying to be a troll but as someone who has also written a lot of C in the past why do you feel like this?

Re: C Strings and my slow descent to madness

#13

Post by [deleted] »

jmclnx wrote: post #6

Yes this is something to get use to. The BSDs created strlcpy(3) and wcslcpy(3) https://man.openbsd.org/strlcpy.3 https://man.openbsd.org/wcslcpy.3 which to me will help with some of these issues. Too bad other Operating Systems do not have these. On Linux there is libbsd to get these, but I would like to see these to be added to the stdc. Instead the c23 standard is messing with realloc(3) which could break some old…

[deleted]

Re: C Strings and my slow descent to madness

#14

Post by torstenvl »

jmclnx wrote: post #6

Yes this is something to get use to. The BSDs created strlcpy(3) and wcslcpy(3) https://man.openbsd.org/strlcpy.3 https://man.openbsd.org/wcslcpy.3 which to me will help with some of these issues. Too bad other Operating Systems do not have these. On Linux there is libbsd to get these, but I would like to see these to be added to the stdc. Instead the c23 standard is messing with realloc(3) which could break some old…

I don't know of a compiler that forces you to use the newest version of the standard, which is why I've always kind of thought "don't break old code" was treated too much like dogma. So from that perspective, a non issue.

However, there is a problem that has nothing to do with old code: they increased the number of situations that constitute undefined behavior, with no public discussion and no justification. It's frankly dangerous behavior.

Re: C Strings and my slow descent to madness

#15

Post by qsort »

bobajeff wrote: post #8

I've been wondering lately why many people write c in c++ rather than just c. I think this might be the reason.

People write C in C++ because they don't actually know C++ and think it's "basically C with classes and strings".

There are legitimate reasons why someone would rather write C, but "I don't understand RAII" is not one of them.

Re: C Strings and my slow descent to madness

#16

Post by t43562 »

_benj wrote: post #5

With the woes of string.h being known, why not just use an alternative like https://github.com/antirez/sds ? I’ve also been having a blast with C because writing C feels like being a god! But the biggest thing that I like about C is that the world is sort of written on it! Just yesterday I needed to parse a JSON… found a bunch of libraries that do that and just picked one that I liked the API.

Yes, I do think that you cannot fairly dismiss C because of strcpy_l only being available on Windows when it's quite possible to implement it yourself or use a library like the one you mention.

Re: C Strings and my slow descent to madness

#18

Post by t43562 »

felipemnoa wrote: post #12
_benj wrote: post #5

With the woes of string.h being known, why not just use an alternative like https://github.com/antirez/sds ? I’ve also been having a blast with C because writing C feels like being a god! But the biggest thing that I like about C is that the world is sort of written on it! Just yesterday I needed to parse a JSON… found a bunch of libraries that do that and just picked one that I liked the API.

>>I’ve also been having a blast with C because writing C feels like being a god Not trying to be a troll but as someone who has also written a lot of C in the past why do you feel like this?

It's not doing as many things behind your back as the dynamic languages and C++ do. More things are your responsibility.

Re: C Strings and my slow descent to madness

#20

Post by magicalhippo »

gavinhoward wrote: post #11

Okay, I agree that by default , C strings are bad. But it doesn't have to stay that way. Someone else in the comments mentioned antirez's sds library for dynamic strings. This works, but you could also easily roll your own. All you need is an init function, and perhaps an assert or other check at the end of it that the string has a nul terminator. At that point, type checking will let you blindly pass those strings (…

> by default, C strings are bad.

C strings aren't bad. They can't be, because they don't exist. C doesn't have strings. And that is the issue.

As you say, things get a lot better when you actually introduce strings as a concrete concept rather than a set of lose conventions.

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