Avoid certain functions in C/C++

[Dr Andrew John Hughes]

On 08:50 Wed 06 Apr     , Kelly O'Hair wrote:
> 
> Just an FYI...
> 
> Anyone working with C/C++ should be well aware of the functions we should be avoiding:
>   http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Community+Group+security/funclist
> 
> Microsoft has used the term "banned" and has a much more extensive list:
>   http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb288454.aspx
> 
> Unfortunately, we often cannot use the recommended replacements unless we know that the
> replacement is available on all platforms, however, some are fairly obvious, like using snprintf
> instead of sprintf.
> 
> Functions like sprintf, vsprintf, strcat, strcpy, access, chmod, chown, lchown, chdir, ...
> all have know issues or have caused too many common mistakes over the years, we need to
> avoid the use of these functions.
> 

Thanks for the list.  That'll surely prove a useful reference.

Have you considered using autoconf in OpenJDK?  It was pretty much designed for just this
scenario (checking the availability of functions).

> -kto

-- 
Andrew :)

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Red Hat, Inc. (http://www.redhat.com)

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