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Re: strlen on a NULL
- To: Rich Hyde <rich at adoc dot xerox dot com>
- Subject: Re: strlen on a NULL
- From: Lou Zirko <lzirko at aye dot net>
- Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 11:59:43 -0500
- Cc: Ian Collins <ian at kiwiplan dot co dot nz>, gnuwin32 <gnu-win32 at cygnus dot com>
- References: <Your message of "Mon, 11 May 1998 23:05:56 PDT." <3557E6C4.EF2F27B3@kiwiplan.co.nz>
I can remember crashing HPUX ten years ago due to this `anomoly`. True
different systems reacted differently.
Lou Zirko
On 09:25 AM 5/12/98 PDT entities calling themselves Rich Hyde spewed the
following words of wisdom:
>On some of the original UNIX machines address 0 was mapped and pointed to
the
>magic number at the start of the kernel object.
>
>It was common on these systems to find files in the filesystem with this
>string as a name. This was true for most PDP11s. On the VAX the
location
>often contained a zero. On the early SUN and some other platforms
>address zero was typically not a valid address, and they would core dump.
>Some of these platforms had hardware limitations that made mapping zero
>either hard or impossible. So they maintained it was a software bug.
Others
>were offended by the sloppiness and deliberately did not fix this.
>
>It became a big enough problem that many UNIXes provided a
>kernel compilation flag to not map address zero if you wanted to make
sure
>that the code you developed would work on other systems.
>
>It started out as a bug, then some depended on it as a feature, then it
became
>a bug again. I stopped tracking this bug 12 or more years ago so I do
not
>know if the mindless masses have decided that it is a bug or a feature
again,
>as these things seem to change with the wind.
>
>Rich
>
>-
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>
Lou Zirko
Key fingerprint = E89C 8AA2 52C7 0E7B 73D1 1D96 2EF3 7B3D 864D FADE
"Were all bozos on this bus", Nick Danger, Third Eye
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCM d+(--)@>- s+(++)>+++:+(++)> a+ C++(++++)$
UBLUAVHIOSC*++++(on++++)$>++++ P++(+++)$ L++++$ E$ W++(+++)$ N++(+++)>$ o>$
!K(---) w+++(++++)$ O$ !M V-$ PS+(+++)@ PE@ Y++>$ PGP++(+++)$ t+>$ !5 X++>$
R+>$ tv+>$ b++ DI++(++++)>+++$ D++>$ G++>$ e++(+++)? h+(++)>$ r>$ y
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
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