stdint.h provides various machine-independent integer types that are very
handy to use, especially the uint64_t family. You would assume it's something
like long long unsigned int and tempted to use %llu in printf, which, however, will be
reported as a warning by any decent compiler.
warning: format '%llu' expects argument of type 'long long unsigned int', but argument 4 has type 'uint64_t' [-Wformat]
The Right Way
The right way to print uint64_t in printf/snprintf family
functions is this (source):
#define __STDC_FORMAT_MACROS
#include <inttypes.h>
uint64_t i;
printf("%"PRIu64"\n", i);
PRIU64 is a macro introduced in C99, and are supposed to mitigate platform
differences and "just print the thing". More macros for printf family can be
found here.
The Story
In my case, I mistakenly use %lu to print a uint64_t integer. Of course, the
compiler gave warning on this. But...you know, it's "just warnings", should be no big deal.
Well, 80% of the time it is fine. Yet this time, it's not.
Since uint64_t takes 8 bytes but %lu will only eat 4 bytes, so my next print
argument, %s comes in and happily print who knows what...
Never ignore warnings, NEVER.