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C is really great for writing format encoders/decoders that easily bind with any scripting or compiled language in existence. The ease of compiling it on all pl
by vortico 9y ago
C is really great for writing format encoders/decoders that easily bind with any scripting or compiled language in existence. The ease of compiling it on all platforms and producing binaries that export simple "function_name" symbols make it still the best choice for delivering a format implementation as widely as possible.
- erik_seaberg 9y agoMost decoders are in a position to be attacked with malicious input, which makes C a disastrous choice.
- vortico 9y agoIn my experience, most applications of C libraries are used in places where security is irrelevant, but even if it mattered, there are of course ways to write C without carelessly throwing around pointers. For example, an AIFF to WAV converter likely doesn't need to allocate any memory at all, it just takes a buffer with a length and writes to a buffer with a length. It's very easy to prove correctness of a large number of library decoders/encoders, but of course there are others which may be difficult.