Re: [PATCH 1/2] man/man3/{mem,strn}*(): SYNOPSIS, STANDARDS: Document these as provided by <memory.h>

Alejandro Colomar <[email protected]> Sat, 1 Aug 2026 00:05:44 +0200

Newsgroups	org.kernel.vger.linux-man
Message-ID	<am0ax4Oe6--0Deco@devuan>

Hi Joseph,

> Date: 2026-07-31 21:23:35+0000
> From: Joseph Myers <[email protected]>
>
> I think it's irresponsible to use the man-pages project to promote 
> personal idiosyncratic ideas like this in preference to what's been the 
> standard location of functions since 1989.

That's 37 years.  During these 37 years we have gathered a lot of
experience and data about this.  And the conclusion is that it was
a huge mistake.  Programmers have struggled to understand this, and
continue struggling.  This is not about new programmers.  This includes
programmers that have been around for decades, including maintainers of
core projects in which we all rely.

The move from <memory.h> to <string.h> seems to be entirely unjustified,
and was unilateral by the C Committee for C89 (from what I can see).

It's easy to see that all these problems about string handling would
probably be significantly less if these functions had never been
moved to <string.h>.

I agree that changing stuff that has been unchanged for decades should
usually be avoided, be done very carefully, and with strong
justification.  But in this case, it's justified, and doesn't break any
existing or new code, because <memory.h> has been provided since
forever.


Cheers,
Alex

> 
> I'd rather we add a mandatory deprecation warning to memory.h in glibc.
> 
> -- 
> Joseph S. Myers
> [email protected]
> 

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es>

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