From: Siddhesh Poyarekar <siddhesh@gotplt.org>
To: Vincent Lefevre <vincent@vinc17.net>, libc-alpha@sourceware.org
Subject: Re: UB status of snprintf on invalid ptr+size combination?
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2023 08:05:32 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <cb1d1ef7-5985-fdf1-fa1e-805da1eae294@gotplt.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20230319230722.GD390223@zira.vinc17.org>
On 2023-03-19 19:07, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> On 2023-03-19 10:45:59 -0400, manfred via Libc-alpha wrote:
>> All of that said, back to the OP case I would not pass INT_MAX to snprintf.
>> If I have a situation wherein I know that the buffer is large enough, but I
>> don't know its exact size, I'd use sprintf and be done with it. (I'm sure
>> that the actual code is more elaborate than this, but still)
>
> In simple code, probably. But in actual code, it may be more natural
> to use snprintf. Something like that:
>
> snprintf(buf, checked ? SIZE_MAX : n, "%s", s);
>
> The function may not know the buffer size if `checked` is true,
> so that it uses a known bound. Thanks to common code factorized,
> this is more readable than
>
> if (checked)
> sprintf (buf, "%s", s);
> else
> snprintf(buf, n, "%s", s);
>
> in particular in the cases where the format string is complex.
If your application requires such patterns then it really needs an
additional layer of abstraction or maybe a rethink on the pattern
itself. This is not something the C runtime should try to solve.
I think on the glibc front it makes sense from a security perspective to
interpret this through POSIX than the C standard. Even if the C
standard is clarified to be contrary to POSIX and explicitly state that
n is not the size of the buffer (which would be a terrible mistake IMO),
I'd lean towards violating the C standard and conforming to POSIX instead.
Sid
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-03-20 12:05 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 32+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-03-14 19:47 Simon Chopin
2023-03-14 21:39 ` Paul Eggert
2023-03-15 9:22 ` Andreas Schwab
2023-03-15 15:54 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-03-15 18:34 ` Michael Hudson-Doyle
2023-03-19 14:45 ` manfred
2023-03-19 23:07 ` Vincent Lefevre
2023-03-20 12:05 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar [this message]
2023-03-20 12:17 ` Alejandro Colomar
2023-03-20 12:29 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-03-20 13:36 ` Vincent Lefevre
2023-03-20 13:50 ` Vincent Lefevre
2023-03-20 16:56 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-03-20 17:36 ` Vincent Lefevre
2023-03-20 15:09 ` Vincent Lefevre
2023-03-20 16:15 ` Alejandro Colomar
2023-03-20 16:33 ` Vincent Lefevre
2023-03-20 17:00 ` Vincent Lefevre
2023-03-20 17:31 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-03-20 17:45 ` Vincent Lefevre
2023-03-15 12:39 ` Vincent Lefevre
2023-03-16 10:29 ` Stephan Bergmann
2023-03-18 2:07 ` Vincent Lefevre
2023-03-18 2:30 ` Alejandro Colomar
2023-03-18 10:58 ` Vincent Lefevre
2023-03-18 15:01 ` Andreas Schwab
2023-03-19 22:48 ` Vincent Lefevre
2023-03-19 23:24 ` Andreas Schwab
2023-03-20 4:10 ` Vincent Lefevre
2023-03-20 9:19 ` Andreas Schwab
2023-03-20 10:42 ` Vincent Lefevre
2023-03-20 10:44 ` Andreas Schwab
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