From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@enterprisedb.com>
cc: Ranier Vilela <ranier.vf@gmail.com>,
        Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>,
        PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: printf %s with NULL pointer (was Re: BUG #17098: Assert failed on
 composing an error message when adding a type to an extension being dropped)
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Comments: In-reply-to Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@enterprisedb.com>
	message dated "Thu, 22 Jul 2021 08:20:28 +0200"
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Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2021 10:24:05 -0400
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Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@enterprisedb.com> writes:
> On 14.07.21 18:26, Tom Lane wrote:
>> https://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/tree/src/stdio/vfprintf.c#n593
>> case 's':
>> a = arg.p ? arg.p : "(null)";

> Similar here: 
> https://github.com/ensc/dietlibc/blob/master/lib/__v_printf.c#L188

I also took a look at μClibc, as well as glibc itself, and learned some
additional facts.  glibc's behavior is not just 'print "(null)" instead'.
It is 'print "(null)" if the field width allows at least six characters,
otherwise print nothing'.  μClibc is bug-compatible with this, but other
implementations seem to generally just substitute "(null)" for the input
string and run with that.  I'm inclined to side with the latter camp.
I'd rather see something like "(nu" than empty because the latter looks
too much like it might be correct output; so I think glibc is expending
extra code to produce a less-good result.

> I think unless we get counterexamples, this is all good.

Barring objections, I'll press ahead with changing snprintf.c to do this.

			regards, tom lane