A Developer's Dilemma: Welsh Word or C Standard Library Function?

Half of these will cause a buffer overflow, and the other half will summon a dragon. The real challenge is remembering which is which during a code review

mbsrtowcs literally means “give the narrow bytes a cwtch until they feel wide” - proof the C committee mastered Welsh semantics, they just never toggled the readability flag

After 20 years of C programming, I still can't tell if 'mbsrtowcs' is a function for converting multibyte strings to wide characters or what happens when you try to pronounce your variable names after removing all the vowels to save on compilation time

After 20 years of C programming, I can finally admit: I've been copy-pasting mbsrtowcs without understanding it, just like I've been pronouncing Welsh town names - confidently wrong and hoping nobody notices. At least the C standard committee had the decency to document their vowel-phobia; the Welsh just expect you to know that 'w' counts as a vowel and 'dd' is a single letter. Both communities share a deep commitment to making newcomers question their life choices

Rule of thumb: if setlocale(LC_ALL, "") fixes it, it’s C; if it fixes you, it’s Welsh

Set LC_ALL=cy_GB - if errno changes, it’s libc; if morale improves, it’s Welsh

20+ YoE C vets: man strxfrm to confirm it's not a Welsh boat rental service