Re: [PATCH v2 0/3] Rewrite strcpy(3)

[Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com>]

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Hi Jakub,

On 12/13/22 21:56, Jakub Wilk wrote:
> The sheer size of this page make it almost unusable for me.
> Please don't merge it.
> 
> * Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com>, 2022-12-13 00:00:
>>       stpecpy(3), stpecpyx(3)
>>              Not provided by any library.
> 
> Then they don't belong in the man-pages project.
> 
>>       strscpy(3)
>>              Not provided by any library.  It  is  a  Linux  kernel  internal
>>              function.
> 
> Ditto.

And strictly speaking, I shouldn't document strlcpy(3bsd) and strlcat(3bsd) 
either because they're not provided by our libc; libbsd already has manual pages 
for them, anyway.

Regarding this, the intention of the page is not to coldly document the behavior 
of functions in terms of the byte operations they perform.  That's what has been 
done until now, and the result is what we know: many string copy functions are 
dreaded (e.g., strncpy(3)), because most programmers don't use them correctly.

This new page instead, shows all string copying functions, including those 
developed by other systems as alternatives to the standard ones.  They did it 
for a reason: the standard functions don't cover all use cases, and there's a 
need to roll your own.  But rolling your own is bad.  It's better if someone 
explains what alternative string copy functions exist, when they are more 
appropriate than libc ones, and when they are not.  Even the old pages 
documented strlcpy(3) a little bit!

I suggest for a first release using the new page string_copy(7).  I'll rewrite 
anyway strcpy(3) and all others to be minimal, _and_ be reductions of 
string_copy(7), for fast lookup.

Cheers,

Alex



-- 
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