456391 - Consider using typedefs and static analysis to explicitly annotate UTF-correct strings

Status: NEW

(Core :: XPCOM, defect)

Description

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Currently we can get invalid UTF8 and UTF16 from various external sources. It is a bug to pass this incorrect UTF-encoded data to conversion functions such as ConvertUTF8toUTF16.

I'd like to consider using typedefs and static analysis to annotate and separate string data which we know is UTF-correct from data which needs to be validated:

typedef nsACString nsAUTF8String;
typedef nsCString nsUTF8String;

Then enforce that assignments from CString->UTF8String are only performed through safe functions or through a cast function.