Strcat broken on win32 in 5.14/00

ROOT
1

Hello,

I downloaded the “recommended” windows binary today, and find several of my macros from my UNIX boxen not working. I have discovered that it’s because strcat is not functioning under win32, though it works just fine on Solaris 10 and OS X 10.4.

Here’s a simple function example:

void teststrings(const char* label) {
   char* name = new char*;
   cout << "1) NAME: " << name << "\tLABEL: " << label << endl;
   strcpy(name,"base");
   cout << "2) NAME: " << name << "\tLABEL: " << label << endl;
   strcat(name,label);
   cout << "3) NAME: " << name << "\tLABEL: " << label << endl;
}

Under Solaris:
Version 4.00/02, 24 February 2004
Compiled for SolarisCC5
CINT/ROOT C/C++ Interpreter 5.15.123, Feb 9 2004
root [0] .L teststrings.C
root [1] teststrings(“hello”)

  1. NAME: LABEL: hello
  2. NAME: base LABEL: hello
  3. NAME: basehello LABEL: hello

Under OS X:
Version 5.14/00, 29 December, 2006
Compiled for macosx with thread support
CINT/ROOT C/C++ Interpreter 5.16.06, November 24, 2006
root [0] .L teststrings.C
root [1] teststrings(“hello”)

  1. NAME: LABEL: hello
  2. NAME: base LABEL: hello
  3. NAME: basehello LABEL: hello

Under win XP
Version 5.14/00, 14 December, 2006
Compiled for win32
CINT/ROOT C/C++ Interpreter 5.16.06, November 24, 2006
root [0] .L teststrings.C
root [1] teststrings(“hello”)

  1. NAME: LABEL: hello
  2. NAME: base LABEL: hello
  3. NAME: base LABEL: hello

I found one thread (root.cern.ch/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1434) that seemed to indicate that Philippe found an error in the MS compiler, but this was supposedly fixed in 2005???

Any ideas as to what happened? Is there a “fixed” or non-optimized build for winXP that has a working strcat?

Many kind thanks,
-Don

2

Hi,
your “name=new…” does not allocate a buffer; it’s highly surprising that this worked on any platform. Instead do e.g. “char name[1024];”, where the 1024 must be sufficient to hold trhe whole string. Also you might use strlen to check for buffer overflows.
Cheers, Axel.

3

Hi Alex,

Thanks you’re right. That declaration should be:
"new char[strlen(label)+strlen(base)+1]"
where base is defined as my base name.

Thanks again,
-Don