Argh. If I see one more string pointer/bounds bug...

Okay, question of the day. What would you do if you had a time machine?

Some would go back and play the winning lottery numbers. Others would do historical research and meet their favorite historical figures. Others would try to change history for the better and prevent wars or other tragedies.

Me? I'd go back in time and locate the man responsible for leaving a genuine string data type out of the original C implementation. I'd put a gun to his head and force him to get off his lazy ass and write a string data type with built-in memory management and bounds checking. He wouldn't be allowed to let C out into the wild until he'd done this.

If you counted up all of the crashing bugs in C programs and totaled them, I'd say at least fifty percent of them wouldn't have happened if it weren't for the fact that you must do your own pointer/bounds management for strings in C. I have seen more bugs related to C string pointers than any other bug.

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Tony Fabris