I understand Drepper pretty much considers string.h a lost cause, and I can’t fault him for that.

It’s rather that POSIX decided to add the strl functions, so adding them (and verifying their semantics) is a necessity.

A purist would support removing strcpy, etc... but that wouldn't go well, so adding an improvement is acceptable.

> A purist would support removing strcpy, etc...

That is very much Drepper’s position:

> Correct string handling means that you always know how long your strings are and therefore you can you memcpy (instead of strcpy).

> Beside, those who are using strcat or variants deserved to be punished.

They should have added a warning for strcpy 20 years ago and shipped the compiler with it default enabled.

I think the fact that it will be added to POSIX was decisive.

I think he is doing other things these days https://research.redhat.com/blog/project_member/ulrich-drepp...

He isn't involved anymore, is he?