using safe string functions in wine

[James Hawkins]

Hey,

While perusing msdn recently, I stumbled across string safe functions.
 These functions were created to replace the standard c string
handling routines.  The following are some design criteria of string
safe functions (msdn):

* Always NULL-terminate the string.
* Always take a destination buffer size.
* Always return consistent return codes (an HRESULT).
* Support 32-bit and 64-bit environments.
* Flexibility.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsecure/ht...

What is your opinion on whether we should implement and use either the
user-mode or kernel-mode (or both) string safe functions?  Using these
functions instead of the standard c string functions would promote
consistency and security in the wine code base.  On the other hand,
using these functions adds another layer of calls to the code.  What
are other pro's and con's of using string safe functions?

[Steven Edwards]

--- James Hawkins  wrote:
> What is your opinion on whether we should implement and use either the
> user-mode or kernel-mode (or both) string safe functions?  Using these
> functions instead of the standard c string functions would promote
> consistency and security in the wine code base.  On the other hand,
> using these functions adds another layer of calls to the code.  What
> are other pro's and con's of using string safe functions?

One of the ReactOS guys started this if Wine wants to adopt it.

http://www.westparkcom.net/Royce3/StrSafe.zip

Thanks
Steven

__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. 
http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo

[Alexandre Julliard]

James Hawkins  writes:
> What is your opinion on whether we should implement and use either the
> user-mode or kernel-mode (or both) string safe functions?  Using these
> functions instead of the standard c string functions would promote
> consistency and security in the wine code base.  On the other hand,
> using these functions adds another layer of calls to the code.  What
> are other pro's and con's of using string safe functions?

The main con is that these functions are not standard, and ugly as
hell. Also, all they do is allow someone to write bad code without
opening too many security holes; IMHO writing good code instead is a
better way to achieve that.