supporting strings > 2 GB

[Bruno Haible <bruno@clisp.org>]

Hi Paul, Eric,

I'd like to get over the INT_MAX limit on string size for
  * the *printf family of functions,
  * the wcswidth, mbswidth functions,
like it has been done for large files and regular expressions.

The benefit I expect from that is:
  - Support of strings > 2 GB or 4 GB without making applications more complex.
  - Since such strings occur rarely, these corner cases of the code are most
    often untested. The change would eliminate these untested corners, thus
    eliminating a number of bugs.

How was it done for regular expressions?
  1) POSIX introduced a type 'regoff_t' that is to be used instead of 'int',
     in the context of the regex APIs.
     https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/regex.h.html
  2) glibc introduced a preprocessor define _REGEX_LARGE_OFFSETS.
  3) gnulib defines _REGEX_LARGE_OFFSETS to 1.

In a similar vein, I think it could be done like this for *printf:
  1) Introduce a type 'printf_len_t' that is a signed type, either 'int' or
     'ptrdiff_t'. And a constant PRINTF_LEN_MAX accordingly.
  2) For each *printf functions that returns 'int', define a similar function
     *printfl, that returns 'printf_len_t'.
  3) Introduce %ln as a printf_len_t alternative to %n.
  4) If _PRINTF_LARGE is defined and non-zero, define xxxprintf as an alias
     of xxxprintfl (e.g. '#define xxxprintf xxxprintfl').
  5) Gnulib defines _PRINTF_LARGE to 1.

And similarly for wcswidth, with new function wclswidth and macro
_WCSWIDTH_LARGE.

This way, applications could switch from *printf to *printfl at their pace,
without introducing uncaught overflow bugs at any moment.

Has this already been discussed in the Austin Group, or on the glibc list?

Bruno