From: Tony Williams 

Geo wrote:
> "John Beckett" 
wrote in message
> news:417a21b4.28158369{at}216.144.1.254...
>
>
>>I confess that I gave up on cout some time ago. I tried a couple of times
>>to break my old "printf" habits,
>
>
> There have been a number of exploits because people used printf, one of the
> reasons I'm taking this class is so I can understand why and what the
> difference is between cout and printf.

Usually it's someone using sprintf to format a string in memory. The simple
rule is to always use snprintf which makes you put an upper bound on the
number of bytes to be written - buffer overflows can't happen then. Most of
the string functions have a similar "n" version - strncpy,
strncat and so on.

We have a rule forbidding the use of non-bounded string functions and it
makes for much more reliable code.

--
Tony

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