Linux Eliminates the Strncpy API After Six Years of Work, 360 Patches

This sort of boring grind is where the real work of systems engineering is done. Big infrastructure projects like this work on making the Linux kernel more reliable while still keeping it workable throughout the process move on the scale of decades, not months.

I wonder, why not use a string buffer paired with its length? For example, maybe use struct that has char pointer, and 2 ints (occupied length + total buffer length). Almost like c++'s std::string. This null terminator thing really sucks, it's potentially insecure and often unperformant.

Note that "360 Patches" is 360 uses of strncpy that have been removed, not necessarily bugs.

the zero terminated string is I think is computing's biggest mistake. Pascal style strings were much safer.

I worked on a Win32 app that used space-padded strings, i.e. the destination string was padded with spaces, but there was still a null on the last byte. You had to use special versions of the string functions for length, copy etc.

I’m not sure why this was - the source base was so old it might have had its origins in Pascal struct behaviour.

A reminder that we've had strlcpy[1] for ~ 30 years but it was never accepted into the Linux world because of typical petty open source bullshit. This is why we can't have nice things.

[1] https://man.openbsd.org/strlcpy

Wonder when is someone going to brave and fork the linux kernel and try to ffwd it with automatic programming.