Re: Suggested method for returning a string from a C program?

On 22/03/2025 14:22, Scott Lurndal wrote:

antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) writes:

bart <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:

On 21/03/2025 17:51, Waldek Hebisch wrote:

bart <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:

 

(Probably intptr_t or ssize_t is better for
that purpose, and will be portable between Windows and Linux.)

>
Those did not exist in 1991 and would be needed only for small
machines.  Except for Microsoft which decided to push its own,
different way.

 ssize_t existed in before 1990 (in SVR4).   intptr_t came later.
 $ grep ssize_t common/head/*
common/head/aio.h:  ssize_t            aio__return;    /* operation result value       */
common/head/unistd.h:extern ssize_t    read(int, void *, size_t);
common/head/unistd.h:extern ssize_t    write(int, const void *, size_t);
 

One 'con' for Linux' approach is when someone assumes 'long' is i32;
when they run code on 64 bits, it will either be wasteful, or it could
go badly wrong.

>
One 'con' of any assumption is that somebody can make a different
assumption.

 Programmers shouldn't be making 'assumptions' in the first place.
 The architectural ABI describes fully the capabilities of the
native types.  If the programmer isn't aware of that, they
shouldn't be programming.
 

This is 'making assumptions' when the code is subsequently run on a different platform.
And those assumptions made by a million programmers in myriad codebases are behind decisions on whether to increase 'int' and/or 'long' when implementing the language on a new architecture with wider types.