Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.lang.c++ > #86481

Re: Never use strncpy!

From Juha Nieminen <nospam@thanks.invalid>
Newsgroups comp.lang.c++
Subject Re: Never use strncpy!
Date 2022-09-22 05:59 +0000
Organization Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID <tggtkr$10rd$1@gioia.aioe.org> (permalink)
References (1 earlier) <tgf39h$1qua1$1@dont-email.me> <tgf3l1$1qu51$3@dont-email.me> <tgfh5a$1s7n1$1@dont-email.me> <tgfhrv$1s8i7$1@dont-email.me> <tgfus6$1tinp$1@dont-email.me>

Show all headers | View raw

David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
> If you use "volatile" when you mean "atomic", your code is wrong.

Yeah. Some programmers might have mistakenly thought that 'volatile'
means the same thing as "atomic", and thus "thread-safe". However,
programmers who know what they are doing also know that it isn't
anything like that.

I think that the exact semantics of 'volatile' might be largely
implementation-defined, but AFAIK in most if not all compilers
(especially gcc and clang) it effectively acts as an optimization
barrier. It tells the compiler "any access to this must never be
optimized away, nor moved to happen somewhere else in the code".

In other words, if you eg. write a loop where you read a
'volatile' ten times, then the compiler must generate code that
reads it ten times, inside that exact loop and nowhere else.
The compiler must not optimize it to one single read or
completely away (because it doesn't see anything changing it).

By far the most common (perhaps only) use of this is in embedded
programming, especially on very small processors, where things
like ports and CPU pins are mapped into RAM (which means that
reading the same memory location may give different values at
different times, and writing values there most definitely must
never be optimized away).

There's another useful use of 'volatile': In benchmarking.
Run the code that's to be benchmarked, and then assign the
return value to a volatile. This stops the compiler from
optimizing the whole thing away because it sees that the
result isn't being used for anything. (It might not have
optimized it away in the first place, but assigning the
result to a volatile makes sure of that.)

Back to comp.lang.c++ | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

Never use strncpy! Juha Nieminen <nospam@thanks.invalid> - 2022-09-21 10:04 +0000
  Re: Never use strncpy! "Alf P. Steinbach" <alf.p.steinbach@gmail.com> - 2022-09-21 15:06 +0200
  Re: Never use strncpy! David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-09-21 15:24 +0200
    Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-09-21 15:30 +0200
      Re: Never use strncpy! David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-09-21 19:20 +0200
        Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-09-21 19:33 +0200
          Re: Never use strncpy! David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-09-21 23:14 +0200
            Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-09-22 04:40 +0200
              Re: Never use strncpy! David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-09-22 08:56 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-09-22 12:02 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-09-23 13:23 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-09-23 13:49 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-09-23 15:25 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-09-23 16:03 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2022-09-23 14:34 +0000
                Re: Never use strncpy! Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2022-09-23 08:19 -0700
                Re: Never use strncpy! scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2022-09-23 17:57 +0000
                Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-09-23 18:36 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-09-24 16:22 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-09-24 16:25 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-09-24 17:09 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-09-24 17:14 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2022-09-26 17:34 -0700
                Re: Never use strncpy! Juha Nieminen <nospam@thanks.invalid> - 2022-09-26 07:53 +0000
                Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-09-26 10:21 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! Juha Nieminen <nospam@thanks.invalid> - 2022-09-26 08:34 +0000
                Re: Never use strncpy! David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-09-26 13:39 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2022-09-26 17:47 -0700
                Re: Never use strncpy! scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2022-09-27 14:17 +0000
                Re: Never use strncpy! David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-09-27 18:07 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2022-09-27 12:42 -0700
                Re: Never use strncpy! David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-09-28 09:32 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2022-09-28 13:34 -0700
                Re: Never use strncpy! scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2022-09-28 21:11 +0000
                Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-10-01 06:26 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2022-10-01 17:01 +0000
                Re: Never use strncpy! Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2022-10-02 15:32 -0700
                Re: Never use strncpy! scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2022-10-03 14:01 +0000
                Re: Never use strncpy! "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2022-10-03 13:49 -0700
                Re: Never use strncpy! "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2022-10-02 12:46 -0700
                Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-10-03 04:14 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2022-10-02 19:43 -0700
                Re: Never use strncpy! "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2022-10-02 19:48 -0700
                Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-10-03 04:53 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2022-10-02 19:58 -0700
                Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-10-03 08:27 +0200
                Re: Never use strncpy! "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2022-10-03 13:49 -0700
                Re: Never use strncpy! "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2022-10-04 10:53 -0700
                Re: Never use strncpy! "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2022-10-02 12:44 -0700
            Re: Never use strncpy! Juha Nieminen <nospam@thanks.invalid> - 2022-09-22 05:59 +0000
              Re: Never use strncpy! David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-09-22 09:32 +0200
    Re: Never use strncpy! Muttley@dastardlyhq.com - 2022-09-21 15:42 +0000
      Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-09-21 18:10 +0200
        Re: Never use strncpy! Muttley@dastardlyhq.com - 2022-09-21 16:19 +0000
          Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-09-21 18:27 +0200
            Re: Never use strncpy! Muttley@dastardlyhq.com - 2022-09-23 14:47 +0000
      Re: Never use strncpy! scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2022-09-21 16:12 +0000
    Re: Never use strncpy! Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2022-09-23 19:52 +0200
      Re: Never use strncpy! David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-09-24 16:25 +0200
  Re: Never use strncpy! scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2022-09-21 14:00 +0000
    Re: Never use strncpy! Juha Nieminen <nospam@thanks.invalid> - 2022-09-22 06:03 +0000
      Re: Never use strncpy! Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2022-09-23 19:50 +0200
        Re: Never use strncpy! Juha Nieminen <nospam@thanks.invalid> - 2022-09-26 07:54 +0000
  Re: Never use strncpy! Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2022-09-21 15:56 +0100
  Re: Never use strncpy! Muttley@dastardlyhq.com - 2022-09-21 15:36 +0000
  Re: Never use strncpy! Frederick Virchanza Gotham <cauldwell.thomas@gmail.com> - 2022-09-21 08:59 -0700
  Re: Never use strncpy! Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> - 2022-09-21 13:23 -0700
    Re: Never use strncpy! Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2022-09-21 21:49 +0100
      Re: Never use strncpy! Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2022-09-21 19:18 -0400
        Re: Never use strncpy! Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2022-09-22 00:39 +0100
          Re: Never use strncpy! Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2022-09-21 20:45 -0400
            Re: Never use strncpy! Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2022-09-21 18:00 -0700
          Re: Never use strncpy! Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2022-09-21 17:55 -0700
        Re: Never use strncpy! Juha Nieminen <nospam@thanks.invalid> - 2022-09-22 06:09 +0000
          Re: Never use strncpy! Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2022-09-22 11:44 -0700
          Re: Never use strncpy! Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2022-09-22 23:33 -0400
      Re: Never use strncpy! Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> - 2022-09-22 19:00 -0700
        Re: Never use strncpy! Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> - 2022-09-22 19:04 -0700
          Re: Never use strncpy! Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2022-09-22 22:49 -0700
    Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-09-24 11:38 +0200
      Re: Never use strncpy! Muttley@dastardlyhq.com - 2022-09-24 09:43 +0000
        Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-09-24 11:59 +0200
      Re: Never use strncpy! Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2022-09-24 06:27 -0400
        Re: Never use strncpy! Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2022-09-24 11:53 -0700
          Re: Never use strncpy! Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-09-24 20:58 +0200
  Re: Never use strncpy! Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2022-09-21 16:01 -0700
    Re: Never use strncpy! David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-09-22 09:37 +0200
    Re: Never use strncpy! Manfred <noname@add.invalid> - 2022-10-01 01:24 +0200
      Re: Never use strncpy! Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2022-09-30 16:43 -0700
  Re: Never use strncpy! Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2022-09-22 21:03 -0500

csiph-web