|
|
|
|
|
|
by SAI_Peregrinus
646 days ago
|
|
|
The issue is that would not be backwards-compatible with all existing code. People might have to actually fix their programs to work reliably on the hardware they're using. That's almost always considered unacceptable. Also there are still lots of projects using C89, where `gets()` still exists. It got removed in 2011, but if you compile with -std=c89 or -std=c99 it still works, 36 years after the Morris worm should have taught everyone better! The C standard developers did guarantee 8-bit bytes for C23, so maybe in 50 years that'll be the default C version. |
|
|
Well, by definition it would, since the only behavior affected is undefined. But sure, in practice. Any change to the language is a danger, and ISO C is very conservative.
I'm just saying that the mental bandwidth of dealing with the old UB mess is now much higher than what it would take to try to fix it. All those cycles of "run ubsan on this old codebase and have endless arguments about interpretation and false positives[1]" could be trivially replaced with "port old codebase to C-unundefined standard", which would put us in a much better position.
[1] Trust me, I've been in these bikesheds and it's not pretty.