Re: [PATCH v2] string: Introduce strtomem() and strtomem_pad()

From: Bagas Sanjaya
Date: Thu Sep 01 2022 - 21:53:44 EST


On 9/2/22 02:09, Kees Cook wrote:
> One of the "legitimate" uses of strncpy() is copying a NUL-terminated
> string into a fixed-size non-NUL-terminated character array. To avoid
> the weaknesses and ambiguity of intent when using strncpy(), provide
> replacement functions that explicitly distinguish between trailing
> padding and not, and require the destination buffer size be discoverable
> by the compiler.
>> For example:
>
> struct obj {
> int foo;
> char small[4] __nonstring;
> char big[8] __nonstring;
> int bar;
> };
>
> struct obj p;
>
> /* This will truncate to 4 chars with no trailing NUL */
> strncpy(p.small, "hello", sizeof(p.small));
> /* p.small contains 'h', 'e', 'l', 'l' */
>
> /* This will NUL pad to 8 chars. */
> strncpy(p.big, "hello", sizeof(p.big));
> /* p.big contains 'h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', '\0', '\0', '\0' */
>
> When the "__nonstring" attributes are missing, the intent of the
> programmer becomes ambiguous for whether the lack of a trailing NUL
> in the p.small copy is a bug. Additionally, it's not clear whether
> the trailing padding in the p.big copy is _needed_. Both cases
> become unambiguous with:
>
> strtomem(p.small, "hello");
> strtomem_pad(p.big, "hello", 0);
>
> See also https://github.com/KSPP/linux/issues/90
>

Should'nt strscpy() do the job?

--
An old man doll... just what I always wanted! - Clara