David Gray

This article describes a reference chart that doubles as the engine behind a data structure mapper for use by C, C++, VBA, and C# programming. This is one of many tools that I have built as Microsoft Excel workbooks and templates. If you need to know the memory size of an obscure Windows object, such as a LANGID, it's probably here.

I was reminded today why it is essential for developers either to use their own creations (Eat their own dog food.) or work closely with dedicated testers who do so. It’s all too easy for a developer working independently to miss important details that make their creations harder to use than they should be, or outright defective. By the end of the project, I had a really convincing reminder of how much work it takes to anticipate everything that can sabotage even the simplest sounding task, and… Show more

I was reminded today why it is essential for developers either to use their own creations (Eat their own dog food.) or work closely with dedicated testers who do so. It’s all too easy for a developer working independently to miss important details that make their creations harder to use than they should be, or outright defective. By the end of the project, I had a really convincing reminder of how much work it takes to anticipate everything that can sabotage even the simplest sounding task, and how many steps get done without giving them a second thought. Show less

To test some boundary cases in a program that reads the time stamps attached to the files stored on a Windows computer, I needed ready access to the Daylight Saving Time (DST) transition dates for any year.

Two years ago, to meet a similar requirement, I wrote a program that I called my Time Zone Lab, about which I wrote in "Time Zone Lab: An Expedition into Windows Time Zones." To meet a closely related, need, I concluded that the simplest way to extract the information that I needed… Show more

To test some boundary cases in a program that reads the time stamps attached to the files stored on a Windows computer, I needed ready access to the Daylight Saving Time (DST) transition dates for any year.

Two years ago, to meet a similar requirement, I wrote a program that I called my Time Zone Lab, about which I wrote in "Time Zone Lab: An Expedition into Windows Time Zones." To meet a closely related, need, I concluded that the simplest way to extract the information that I needed from the time zone tables in the Windows Registry was to extend the Time Zone Lab, then construct a Microsoft Excel worksheet around the output of the new program. Show less

While you can often get away with ignoring compiler warnings, failing to at least scan them can bite hard!

Especially in the early stages of development, it is tempting to ignore compiler warnings without much thought, or, at the very least, set them aside to address in a subsequent build. However, this is not always true, since there are a handful of warnings that could justify promotion to fatal errors that stop a build short of the link step.

This article documents issues that I have identified in the new secure overloads of the CRT buffered print routines.

A few weeks ago, I upgraded a program that I initially developed using Visual Studio 6, and wrote entirely in C++, to use the new CRT library that ships with Visual Studio 2013. Since the Security Development Lifecycle checks are enabled by default (even in a project that is an upgrade from Visual C++ 6), the first compiler log flagged all of its many calls to swprintf as… Show more

This article documents issues that I have identified in the new secure overloads of the CRT buffered print routines.

A few weeks ago, I upgraded a program that I initially developed using Visual Studio 6, and wrote entirely in C++, to use the new CRT library that ships with Visual Studio 2013. Since the Security Development Lifecycle checks are enabled by default (even in a project that is an upgrade from Visual C++ 6), the first compiler log flagged all of its many calls to swprintf as potentially insecure, and recommended replacing them with calls to swprintf_s.

Although the Visual C++ team thoughtfully provided convenience macros to ease the transition, they cannot be used unless the output buffer is a static array. Unfortunately, all but two of the swprintf calls in question use static buffers that are accessed through pointers. Nevertheless, those weren’t the problem, because the DLL that owns the buffers exports companion functions that return their sizes.

The problem arose with the two others, both of which use smaller buffers, also accessed through pointers. Alas, when I added the sizeOfBuffer argument to them, I habitually specified the same size as the bigger buffers exported by the DLL. Suddenly, I had a very unexpected, and ugly, buffer overflow exception. What happened? Show less

This article describes a class that adds color to console program displays.

Having spent quite a bit of time in front of a NetWare console and written my share of QuickBASIC utility programs, I knew that it was possible to output text in colors other than the default text and background colors set for the console window in which it runs. While doing so isn't all that hard, I decided to discover what it would take to make the task transparent.

The MessageInColor class is intended… Show more

This article describes a class that adds color to console program displays.

Having spent quite a bit of time in front of a NetWare console and written my share of QuickBASIC utility programs, I knew that it was possible to output text in colors other than the default text and background colors set for the console window in which it runs. While doing so isn't all that hard, I decided to discover what it would take to make the task transparent.

The MessageInColor class is intended for use as a more or less drop-in replacement for the System.Console.Write and System.Console.WriteLine methods, with convenience features to simplify displaying messages in something other than the default screen colors. It is intended for adding “spot color,” such as when you need to call attention to something important, such as an error message. Everything this class does can be achieved using built-in properties and methods of the System.Console class, but it’s a tad more work Show less

Share Win32 string resources without the risk of conflicting resource IDs.

This article presents a straightforward approach that solves two problems.

Use Microsoft Excel to efficiently manage read only Win32 string resources, without manually editing the resource script.

Even if the material seems inapplicable to your needs, it includes a number of useful tips that make the article worth at least a quick skim.

For years, I have been frustrated by the record keeping… Show more

Share Win32 string resources without the risk of conflicting resource IDs.

This article presents a straightforward approach that solves two problems.

Use Microsoft Excel to efficiently manage read only Win32 string resources, without manually editing the resource script.

Even if the material seems inapplicable to your needs, it includes a number of useful tips that make the article worth at least a quick skim.

For years, I have been frustrated by the record keeping required by the methods suggested for sharing Win32 string resources among applications. Why hasn't this record keeping been automated? One day, I had a specific application that was infinitely easier to code if all of its strings lived in a satellite DLL. As I was completing it, I realized that the same approach can be used to package any set of strings, so that you can have string libraries that are as easy to use as code libraries.

Since the project that gave rise to this requirement is a library that requires a custom string library for each application that employs it, I also needed a way to generate them efficiently. This gave rise to the Excel application, which uses worksheets to store the strings and their associated IDs and to drive a VBA macro that generates the read only resource script and its associated header, and integrates both into the default resource script of a Visual Studio project. When you revise a set of strings, the generator recognizes that the secondary script is already incorporated into the main script, and leaves the main resource script unchanged. Show less

The routines in this library can parse any string that I can throw at it, including Common Name strings read from X.509 Digital Certificates.

In the course of writing a program to generate a report about the properties of the contents of a Windows certificate store, I discovered that none of the CSV readers that I had at my disposal could process the unusual CSV strings found in many digital certificates. Turning to The Code Project, I found A Fast CSV Reader, which I eagerly downloaded,… Show more

The routines in this library can parse any string that I can throw at it, including Common Name strings read from X.509 Digital Certificates.

In the course of writing a program to generate a report about the properties of the contents of a Windows certificate store, I discovered that none of the CSV readers that I had at my disposal could process the unusual CSV strings found in many digital certificates. Turning to The Code Project, I found A Fast CSV Reader, which I eagerly downloaded, built, and tested.

Regretfully, I quickly discovered that it couldn't handle these types of strings, either, and set about to roll yet another CSV reader of my own.

The type of string that broke every CSV reader at which I threw it looks like the following actual example from a production store of Trusted Root Certificates.

CN=RapidSSL CA, O="GeoTrust, Inc."​, C=US

Specifically, the middle substring, O="GeoTrust, Inc.", is nonstandard, because the opening quotation mark that is intended to protect the comma in the organization name, GeoTrust, Inc. is the fourth character in the substring. This is by design, since the Common Name string is a series of name-value pairs, as are many other certificate properties.

Although every other CSV library in The Code Project and elsewhere that I reviewed mimics a base class, such as System.IO.StreamReader, I chose instead to adhere to the Single Responsibility Principle, and focus entirely on parsing strings, leaving you free to determine how to acquire and manage them Show less

This recent article illustrates a technique for ensuring that information is reported even when Windows is low on memory.

Join me for an adventure in time zone conversion.

One of the requirements of a project that I just completed was to be able to evaluate the age of a file that had been deposited on a FTP server, based on a time reported in a different time zone than the one used on the local machine. The generally accepted approach to such a problem is to convert the time to UTC, get the UTC time from the local machine, and do the arithmetic.

However, that leaves the issue of reporting the… Show more

Join me for an adventure in time zone conversion.

One of the requirements of a project that I just completed was to be able to evaluate the age of a file that had been deposited on a FTP server, based on a time reported in a different time zone than the one used on the local machine. The generally accepted approach to such a problem is to convert the time to UTC, get the UTC time from the local machine, and do the arithmetic.

However, that leaves the issue of reporting the findings to an audience that is not accustomed to thinking in terms of UTC time. I was pleasantly surprised when a quick Google search led directly to "​"Converting Times Between Time Zones,"​ at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397769(v=vs.90).aspx, and the TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime method. Show less