c Posts

A collection of my posts on c. Whether I'm trying to build something new or figure out how to break it, these notes, fixes, and deep dives document my process. I hope you find them useful.

• printf in C

  June 5, 2016

  My personal log on a classic C vulnerability. This post is a quick cheat sheet on using printf safely to avoid format string exploits.

• Supreme C

  January 22, 2016

  I've been thinking about what C would be like with a Go-style API. This is my early concept for "Supreme C", a library for high-level, safe I/O.

• Consistent Build in C

  January 19, 2016

  I wanted a consistent C build, but -std=c99 was hiding POSIX functions. Here's a quick look at using _POSIX_C_SOURCE to solve that.

• Multiple lines string in C

  January 15, 2016

  A quick C tip I learned for cleaner code. Adjacent string literals are automatically joined by the compiler, which is great for multi-line text.

• Exit Status In POSIX-compliant Systems

  January 14, 2016

  Thinking about how I handle exit statuses in C. On POSIX systems, 0 is success and 1 is failure, so I just use the numbers directly.

• Casting Allocation In C

  December 18, 2015

  I always used to cast the result of malloc in C. After digging in, I realized it's not just unneeded, but it can hide serious bugs. Now I do it differently.

• My indent(1) Profile

  December 15, 2015

  To keep my C code style consistent, I rely on indent(1). This post just contains a link to my personal configuration profile for the tool.

• The Rules of Buffer In C

  December 14, 2015

  C's strcpy and strcat are risky. Here's my cheat sheet for using their 'n' versions safely to prevent buffer overflows and corrupting memory.