Exercise 36. Safer Strings
This exercise is designed to get you using bstring from now on, explain why C’s strings are an incredibly bad idea, and then have you change the liblcthw code to use bstring.
Why C Strings Were a Horrible Idea
When people talk about problems with C, they say its concept of a string is one of the top flaws. You’ve been using these extensively, and I’ve talked about the kinds of flaws they have, but there isn’t much that explains exactly why C strings are flawed and always will be. I’ll try to explain that right now, and after decades of using C’s strings, there’s enough evidence for me to say that they are just a bad idea.
It’s impossible to confirm that any given C string is valid:
• A C string is invalid if it doesn’t ...
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