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<h1><a class="header" href="#accepting-strings" id="accepting-strings">Accepting Strings</a></h1>
<h2><a class="header" href="#description" id="description">Description</a></h2>
<p>When accepting strings via FFI through pointers, there are two principles that should be followed:</p>
<ol>
<li>Keep foreign strings &quot;borrowed&quot;, rather than copying them directly.</li>
<li>Minimize <code>unsafe</code> code during the conversion.</li>
</ol>
<h2><a class="header" href="#motivation" id="motivation">Motivation</a></h2>
<p>Rust has built-in support for C-style strings with its <code>CString</code> and <code>CStr</code> types.
However, there are different approaches one can take with strings that are being accepted from a foreign caller of a Rust function.</p>
<p>The best practice is simple: use <code>CStr</code> in such a way as to minimize unsafe code, and create a borrowed slice.
If an owned String is needed, call <code>to_string()</code> on the string slice.</p>
<h2><a class="header" href="#code-example" id="code-example">Code Example</a></h2>
<pre><code class="language-rust ignore">pub mod unsafe_module {
// other module content
#[no_mangle]
pub extern &quot;C&quot; fn mylib_log(msg: *const libc::c_char, level: libc::c_int) {
let level: crate::LogLevel = match level { /* ... */ };
let msg_str: &amp;str = unsafe {
// SAFETY: accessing raw pointers expected to live for the call,
// and creating a shared reference that does not outlive the current
// stack frame.
match std::ffi::CStr::from_ptr(msg).to_str() {
Ok(s) =&gt; s,
Err(e) =&gt; {
crate::log_error(&quot;FFI string conversion failed&quot;);
return;
}
}
};
crate::log(msg_str, level);
}
}
</code></pre>
<h2><a class="header" href="#advantages" id="advantages">Advantages</a></h2>
<p>The example is is written to ensure that:</p>
<ol>
<li>The <code>unsafe</code> block is as small as possible.</li>
<li>The pointer with an &quot;untracked&quot; lifetime becomes a &quot;tracked&quot; shared reference</li>
</ol>
<p>Consider an alternative, where the string is actually copied:</p>
<pre><code class="language-rust ignore">pub mod unsafe_module {
// other module content
pub extern &quot;C&quot; fn mylib_log(msg: *const libc::c_char, level: libc::c_int) {
/* DO NOT USE THIS CODE. IT IS UGLY, VERBOSE, AND CONTAINS A SUBTLE BUG. */
let level: crate::LogLevel = match level { /* ... */ };
let msg_len = unsafe { /* SAFETY: strlen is what it is, I guess? */
libc::strlen(msg)
};
let mut msg_data = Vec::with_capacity(msg_len + 1);
let msg_cstr: std::ffi::CString = unsafe {
// SAFETY: copying from a foreign pointer expected to live
// for the entire stack frame into owned memory
std::ptr::copy_nonoverlapping(msg, msg_data.as_mut(), msg_len);
msg_data.set_len(msg_len + 1);
std::ffi::CString::from_vec_with_nul(msg_data).unwrap()
}
let msg_str: String = unsafe {
match msg_cstr.into_string() {
Ok(s) =&gt; s,
Err(e) =&gt; {
crate::log_error(&quot;FFI string conversion failed&quot;);
return;
}
}
};
crate::log(&amp;msg_str, level);
}
}
</code></pre>
<p>This code in inferior to the original in two respects:</p>
<ol>
<li>There is much more <code>unsafe</code> code, and more importantly, more invariants it must uphold.</li>
<li>Due to the extensive arithmetic required, there is a bug in this version that cases Rust <code>undefined behaviour</code>.</li>
</ol>
<p>The bug here is a simple mistake in pointer arithmetic: the string was copied, all <code>msg_len</code> bytes of it.
However, the <code>NUL</code> terminator at the end was not.</p>
<p>The Vector then had its size <em>set</em> to the length of the <em>zero padded string</em> -- rather than <em>resized</em> to it, which could have added a zero at the end. As a result, the last byte in the Vector is uninitialized memory.
When the <code>CString</code> is created at the bottom of the block, its read of the Vector will cause <code>undefined behaviour</code>!</p>
<p>Like many such issues, this would be difficult issue to track down.
Sometimes it would panic because the string was not <code>UTF-8</code>, sometimes it would put a weird character at the end of the string, sometimes it would just completely crash.</p>
<h2><a class="header" href="#disadvantages" id="disadvantages">Disadvantages</a></h2>
<p>None?</p>
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