should strstr return const char* ?

should strstr return const char* ?

[Jon]

Hi there,

A couple of queries. I hope could be considered.

I see this function on Ubuntu 9.10:

      char *strstr(const char *haystack, const char *needle);

Should it not return as const char * though?

Also could the description be clarified:

DESCRIPTION
        The strstr() function finds the first occurrence of the 
substring needle in the string haystack.  The terminating
        '\0' characters are not compared.


Can this be added: "If needle is longer than haystack it will never 
match. When the search reaches a character position in haystack which 
does not leave enough characters left to compare, searching will end, 
the haystack buffer will not be overrun.

Thanks again for considering this.
Cheers, Jon
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in
the body of a message to majordomo-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Re: should strstr return const char* ?

[Mike Frysinger]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: Text/Plain, Size: 387 bytes --]

On Sunday 28 February 2010 16:29:59 Jon wrote:
> I see this function on Ubuntu 9.10:
> 
>       char *strstr(const char *haystack, const char *needle);
> 
> Should it not return as const char * though?

man pages document the API only.  if you want to propose changing a function, 
you'd have to ask the glibc mainling lists and/or more likely the POSIX 
mailing lists.
-mike

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part. --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 836 bytes --]

Re: should strstr return const char* ?

[Michael Kerrisk]

Hello Jon,

On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 11:29 PM, Jon <jg-hus3n9K41k0@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> A couple of queries. I hope could be considered.
>
> I see this function on Ubuntu 9.10:
>
>     char *strstr(const char *haystack, const char *needle);
>
> Should it not return as const char * though?

As Mike Frysinger pointed out, man-pages here is documenting things as
they are in glibc. (Also, POSIX does not document a "const" here in
the spec.)

> Also could the description be clarified:
> DESCRIPTION
>       The strstr() function finds the first occurrence of the substring
> needle in the string haystack.  The terminating
>       '\0' characters are not compared.
>
>
> Can this be added: "If needle is longer than haystack it will never match.
> When the search reaches a character position in haystack which does not
> leave enough characters left to compare, searching will end, the haystack
> buffer will not be overrun.

I regard these points as reasonably self-evident, so I don't think
they really need to be specifically mentioned. (What else could one
reasonably expect to happen in these cases?)

Thanks,

Michael



-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Author of "The Linux Programming Interface" http://blog.man7.org/
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in
the body of a message to majordomo-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html