[Insight-developers] Policy regarding insecure APIs like strcpy() and sprintf()? Phase out?

[Sean McBride]

On 5/20/09 7:23 PM, Bill Lorensen said:

>It would be a great project to remove the old c-style string routines
>and move to std::string and portable string stream. I think this
>should be possible, but I don't know how much work it would take.

Probably a lot. :(  The most difficult part will be when a change to the
public API is needed.  Like the example I gave: DICOMAppHelper.h uses
strcpy() and in fact propagates its insecurity:

 void GetPatientName(char* name)
   {
   strcpy(name, m_PatientName);
   }

One possibility is:

 void GetPatientName(char* name, size_t bufferlen)
   {
   strlcpy(name, m_PatientName, bufferlen);
   }

another:

 std::string* GetPatientName(void)
   {
   // create new std::string, copy PatientName into it
   }

-- 
____________________________________________________________
Sean McBride, B. Eng                 sean at rogue-research.com
Rogue Research                        www.rogue-research.com 
Mac Software Developer              Montréal, Québec, Canada