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Asked: 2026-05-31T12:15:56+00:00

I’ve read from various sources about there being a lot of bugs, issues and

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I’ve read from various sources about there being a lot of bugs, issues and design flaws in the C Standard library. Some to do with string handling functions, some with I/O etc.

Is this true? If so, can anyone list some of the most common known issues?

Note: I’m talking about the ISO C Library.

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  1. Editorial Team

    Off the top of my head, here are a couple of the known design issues:

    1. Input functions like gets (deprecated in C99, gone in C11, but still lurking in God knows how much legacy code) scanf using a plain %s conversion specifier, etc., that can overrun their target buffer;

    2. Functions such as strtok that use static buffers to store state between calls, and as such are non-reentrant;

    As far as implementation issues, I don’t think anybody who needs a good PRNG is happy with the stock rand function in most implementations.

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