Re: [PATCH v2] Improve mutt's random data generator.

"Kevin J. McCarthy" <[email protected]> Sat, 25 Apr 2026 10:32:01 +0800

Newsgroups	gmane.mail.mutt.devel
Message-ID	<aewnoRbUNIhRdasv@qinghai>

On Fri, Apr 24, 2026 at 04:12:26PM -0400, Kurt Hackenberg wrote:
>On Fri, Apr 24, 2026 at 13:15 +0800, Kevin J. McCarthy wrote:
>>This version switches to using ssize_t for the length parameter and
>>result from getrandom(), and thus doesn't have any unsafe casts.
>
>Good for getrandom() return value, but why for its length argument? 
>That argument is type size_t (at least on my system), and it comes 
>from an argument to mutt_random_bytes() that's also size_t.

Yeah, I started off by changing both to ssize_t.  When I rewrote the 
loop, I realized the comparison had disappeared.  But then I thought, 
eh... just leave it, as Alex pointed out, a 2^63 large number would kill 
the system anyway. :-D

>Only other use I see is
>
>    requested -= result;
>
>Whether requested is signed only matters if either variable has 
>wrapped around into negative[1], and in that case I don't see any good 
>result of that subtraction either way.

I also certainly hope the library call would never make that mistake. 
But the good news is, if it did, requested would be negative and the 
loop would end.

-- 
Kevin J. McCarthy
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