[Gllug] C function strcasecmp

[home at alexhudson.com]

On Fri, Jul 20, 2001 at 04:03:12PM +0100, David Spencer wrote:
> strn(anything) doesn't protect you from buffer overflows; by the time
> you're comparing text you've usually already read the text into the
> buffer that's just overflowed.  Checking the size of text in the edit
> box (or whatever) _before_ reading the text into an appropriately sized
> buffer is what protects you from buffer overflows.

I'm not sure how a non-destructive comparison can cause a buffer overflow,
or how you could compare two strings without knowing their length with
strncasecmp :), but even so, you are worried about segfaults I s'pose.

strn.. doesn't _protect_ you, but it enables you to write functions which
don't overflow buffers, so long as you are capable of reading man pages
(which most programmers can't.... witness strlcat, etc... :( )

Cheers,

Alex.

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