bug#8545: issues with recent doprnt-related changes

[Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>]

On 04/27/11 22:15, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> As I explain in another message, we _can_ dereference this invalid
> pointer.

Sorry, I'm not quite following, since I'm not sure what
the "another message" refers to.

Hmm, perhaps you're talking about this pattern in the code?

        while (fmt < format_end)
	  { ... fmt++ ... }
        switch (*fmt++)

Here, the code is dereferencing *format_end,
which means it's dereferencing one past the end of the
format string that is passed to it.  This is normally
not how buffers are used in C: normally, the pointer to
the end of a buffer is intended to point "one past" the
last byte of the buffer, and is not intended to be dereferenced.

If the intent here is that one should call doprnt with
the pattern (doprnt (A, ASIZE, B, B + BSIZE - 1, AP)) then
I suggest that the point be made clearly in doprnt's comment,
as part of doprnt's API, to prevent future confusion in
this area.