Re: [PATCH 1/2] introduce "banned function" list

On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 10:40 PM Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

There are a few standard C functions (like strcpy) which are
easy to misuse. We generally discourage these in reviews,
but we haven't put advice in CodingGuidelines, nor provided
any automated enforcement. The latter is especially
important because it's more consistent, and it can often
save a round-trip of review.

Let's start by banning strcpy() and sprintf(). It's not
impossible to use these correctly, but it's easy to do so
incorrectly, and there's always a better option.

Is it possible to extend this to ban variables as well? I'm still
going to delete the_index from library code. Once that work is done I
will ban it from entering again (it's only allowed in builtin/ for
example). The next target after that would be the_repository.

Right now I will do this by not declaring the variable [2], which ends
up with a much less friendly compile warning. I did something similar
[1] in an earlier iteration but did not do extensive research on this
topic like you did.

[1] https://public-inbox.org/git/20180606073933.14755-1-pclouds@gmail.com/T/
[2] https://public-inbox.org/git/20180616054157.32433-16-pclouds@gmail.com/
-- 
Duy