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

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

Thanks for an interesting (and exotic) counter-point. For strcpy(), you
always have to run strlen() anyway to know you're not going to overflow,
so you might as well memcpy() at that point. But if you really are OK
with truncation, then using strncpy() lets you copy while walking over
the string only once, which is more efficient.  On the other hand,
strncpy() fills out NULs to the end of the destination array, so you are
paying an extra cost for small strings.

quoted

So I used strncpy() advisedly, and I ignore people running Coccinelle
scripts and blindly sending patches to "fix" ext4.

Given that strncpy() was invented in V7 days for specifically the
purpose of filling the filename field, it is not surprising at all
that it is the perfect tool for the same purpose in ext4 ;-)

We don't have any remaining calls to strncpy() in Git, so this lets us
punt on deciding if the ban is worth changing what's there. We can wait
for somebody to decide they _really_ need strncpy, and we can discuss it
then with a concrete case.

Yes, and the plan (or at least your plan) is to limit the banned
list to things that really has no reason to be used, the above
sounds like a good approach.