GnuPG can't handle some V3 secret keys

[Werner Koch]

On Fri, 4 May 2001, Stefan Bellon wrote:

> I'm not sure whether I got this right. You favour writing code without
> tests for NULL as the OS should react accordingly? Or did I
> misunderstand you?

No!

If you read code written by me you will notice a lot assert()s and
similar constructs at many places even on places where you think,
this can't go wrong.  It has been proven over the years that this is
a very effective way to detect logical errors.

If I do not use an assert but have doubts that other parts of the
code might rely on a freed pointer for example, I set it to NULL and
a backtrace will show you what was wrong.

IIRC, the early implementation of mpi_read() aborted on unreadable
stuff.  I later changed this to return NULL but obviously didn't
fixed all callers.  Frankly the parsing code used to have no good
error handling at all.

  Werner

-- 
Werner Koch        Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit, dum habetur
g10 Code GmbH      et non datur, nondum habetur, quomodo habenda est.
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