Thread: system() , strtok() and pointers

1. System() :
   I've seen many programmers who doesn't recommend using system() for the following reasons :
   
   a. They say that someone may "map" your program to do something else and you wouldn't know about it.
   
   What does that mean? does "he" like replace the program between the quotes (in system()) with another malicious program using the same name for example?
   
   b. They say its slow in bigger programs. I don't understand this part , why would it go slow?? and are there any other cons for system()?
   
   
   
2. strtok() , when you use it on a string , then use it again with NULL as its first argument it would continue on the same string right?
   
   What i wanna know is , does it save the string as "static" on the first call and check later if i wanna use the same string or not? (might be stupid question but im curious).
   
   and how\where can i see the code of a standard function? (im using VC++)
   
   
3. I just noticed that all kinds of pointers (double , int , long , char) are 4 bytes big. Is this a constant size on all computers? or is the size at least the same for all pointers on all computers?
   
   *EDIT* and what does my computer fill in those 4 bytes, the object's adress in memory?

thanks for your time

Hello,

1) Following information below:

a. By calling system(), you are invoking the default shell. For example, system("pause"); The shell executes the command-line given to it which runs the 'pause.exe' program. So your simple c program is relying on two external programs for checking a single key press. Though, what if someone deleted or renamed 'pause.exe'? Better yet, what if someone tried to compile your program on unix, or another operating system...It wouldn't work

b. I would have to say that a is the main reason. It has to invoke a shell which takes time. It has to run a seperate program too, i.e. pause.exe.

2) To parse a string, you must call strtok multiple times. The first time pass the string as the first parameter to strtok; for the second and subsequent calls, pass a null pointer. Because strtok saves str, you can have only one series of strtok calls active at a time. Each call to strtok can use a different delimset.

When strtok is called with a null pointer as the first parameter, it starts searching for the next token at the same point where the previous search ended.

Edit: strtok source

3) I'm not entirely sure. I do know pointers are 4 bytes in 32-bit Windows environments. Note that pointers themselves are allocated from the stack, just like local variables (a 32-bit pointer would use 4 bytes from the stack, and then the memory required for the record would be allocated from the heap).

Edit: Here is a sample:

Code:

Sample Code		Location	Data
int Number = 0x555141;	1004		0x555141
int *pNumber = &Number;	1008		1004
int n = *pNumber;	100C		0x555141

- Stack Overflow

Originally Posted by Stack Overflow

Note that pointers themselves are allocated from the stack, just like local variables

If you so choose -- that is, you can have global or dynamic pointer variables as well.

Thanks alot Stack and Thantos

I still need to know why some say that system() is slow. (if i remember well , Prelude said that once)

You're welcome.

And you can find Prelude's post(s) about that here, here or here.


- Stack Overflow

I was talking about this post. I guess my searching skills betrayed me this time

When i read what Prelude said about the time system() needs to successfly execute , i thought of a little experiment :

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void)
{
	printf("one");
	system("CLS");
	printf("two");
	system("CLS");
	printf("three");
	system("CLS");
	printf("four");
	system("CLS");
	printf("five");
	system("CLS");
	printf("final\n");
	return 0;
}

And its really slow , i just didn't notice it in my programs. Thanks again Stack

If you are making code that will be ported you should never take a pointer size for granted. Its wise to use the sizeof() operator in place of a hard-coded numeric value. As far as all kinds of pointers being the same size, if you do a sizeof() on a pointer to a function you may find its larger than you had expected.

[edit]
Oops I got so caught up in the way the thread digressed I forgot to add my original point The thing with system() is an issue, yes, but also bear in mind no matter what you do to spawn another process, unless you give a full path to the program, malicious code can still be added. When people say this I think they mostly refer to rerouting your program to call an evil version of programs such as pause. But if you are wanting to get rid of that issue, you could always call pause via its full path.

In the case of pause, I suggest using code such as:

Example:

Code:

puts("Please press any key to continue.");
getchar();

[/edit]

Salem :
Thanks for the link . I'll read it when im done with my exams

master5001 :
Thanks for the addition. I don't actually use system() for pausing my programs. I know its "bad" but i wanted to know why

But if you are wanting to get rid of that issue, you could always call pause via its full path.

but the possibility of replacing the pause program would still exist. I mean someone can replace the program in the actual folder\path right?

Yup.

Haha, can you imagine doing an md5 to cover all possible versions of, say, ls floating around in the Linux world (not to mention all Unix)? Every architecture, every optimization flag, every compile-time option would give a different checksum. I reckon there must be thousands, if not more, different checksums out there.

As many as there are updated versions of that for each distro, plus one for every time someone's compiled it using different libraries, compiler flags, compiler versions, etc...

I'd say the number's probably at least several million, especially if you take into account things like Gentoo, where stuff's compiled every week or so...