Copy and paste problem between LabVIEW applications

[FreddyV]

Hello everyone,

these days I discovered to my cost that by performing a simple copy paste operation between two labview applications (2023.3.6f6) the string we are going to paste will contain the copied text with a null character (code display \00) hanging at the end.

This behavior is also achieved simply by using two different instances of the development environment.

We recently upgraded our applications from LabVIEW 2019 to LabVIEW 2023 so I can confirm that in 2019 this problem is not present.

Now, as you can imagine this apparent smallness is capable of generating serious issues, especially if LabVIEW applications communicate with external tools and databases, moreover trying to solve “manually” the situation is unthinkable since the copy and paste operation is very common and afflicts a huge amount of controls and indicators.

I kindly ask if anyone has already encountered this behavior and are there any quick solutions about it.

Regards!

Freddy

[wiebe@CARYA]

image:

[wiebe@CARYA]

I can confirm things are off:

EDIT: This was actually a copy from LV23 64-bit to LV24Q1 32-bit.

Not sure if it's off in the same way as you described.

It seems to be in the pasting, not the copying.

Pasting the string in LV20 give the expected result.

[rolfk]

I remember a bug report about this appended extra zero byte in LabVIEW clipboard operations for strings.

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Copy-pasting-from-Word-appends-a-null-00-character/td-p/4431147

It doesn't exactly say which LabVIEW version but there could be a match.

[FreddyV]

It sounds like the same problem in fact...
It doesn't even seem to depend on the operating system, you have the same behavior with Windows 10 and 11.

I think this problem is really serious and needs to be fixed by NI as soon as possible.

I would be curious to find out from which version of LabVIEW it appeared.

19: OK
20...22: ?
23: Not OK

[Yamaeda]

It doesn't happen to/from 2019 to 2024Q3 32+64 on my computer

[rolfk]

I don't have all the versions installed but did some tests:

anything <-> 2020 SP1 f1  no problem

anything <-> 2022 Q3 f3  no problem

2020 SP1 f1 -> 2024 Q1 f1  added NULL

2022 Q3 f3 -> 2024 Q1 f1  added NULL

anything <-> 2025 Q1 f0  no problem

I don't have any 2023 installed nor the 2024 Q3

So the problem seems to be in the pasting from the clipboard in 2023 Q1 and Q3 and 2024 Q1 and maybe 2024 Q3 (apparently not anymore as reported by Yamaeda) but seems to be fixed in 2025 Q1

"NI needs to fix it": they did, seemingly in 2024 Q3 and definitely in 2025 Q1

[FreddyV]

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@rolfk  ha scritto:

I don't have all the versions installed but did some tests:

anything <-> 2020 SP1 f1  no problem

anything <-> 2022 Q3 f3  no problem

2020 SP1 f1 -> 2024 Q1 f1  added NULL

2022 Q3 f3 -> 2024 Q1 f1  added NULL

anything <-> 2025 Q1 f0  no problem

I don't have any 2023 installed nor the 2024 Q3

So the problem seems to be in the pasting from the clipboard in 2023 Q1 and Q3 and 2024 Q1 and maybe 2024 Q3 (apparently not anymore as reported by Yamaeda) but seems to be fixed in 2025 Q1

"NI needs to fix it": they did, seemingly in 2024 Q3 and definitely in 2025 Q1

---

Thank you for trying these combinations, so it seems that in LabVIEW 2025 the problem has been solved.

You will agree with me, that this is absolutely a critical bug that needs to be fixed even on the 2023 and 2024 versions with a patch, given the impact it can have.

I am quite disappointed that it has been fixed on 2025 and not on the earlier versions, it would at least be necessary to know if a patch is planned, but seeing that it is not even present in the 2025 bug fixes, it makes me think that the strategy is "let's fix it quietly and hope no one noticed"

[rolfk]

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@FreddyV wrote:

You will agree with me, that this is absolutely a critical bug that needs to be fixed even on the 2023 and 2024 versions with a patch, given the impact it can have.

---

Sorry, no I do not agree that this is a very critical bug. Annoying? yes, unexpected? why not.

It's already fixed in 2024 Q3, how far back do you want NI to be obligated to fix bugs retroactively?

Unless it is a proven security bug, NI does generally only fix bugs in the current software version (exceptions have happened). You can dislike that but it is IMHO a reasonable policy.

Everybody thinks their bug is the most important. There are many more that you do not know about and accordingly will not complain about, but might be actually responsible for shutting down an electric plant that might cost someone their life. Is that more critical? Will we ever find out?

There are workarounds:

- Sanitize the input from controls when processing them in your VI

- Upgrade to a newer version

- Downgrade to 2022 or older

As to: "let's fix it quietly and hope no one noticed"! That is a blatant insinuation and the perfect foundation of conspiracy theories.

There are many many bug fixes in every LabVIEW release, some optical, some minor, others more grave. Someone has to collect them and put them in the bug fix list (which while not easily indexable are actually fairly easily findable on this site). The LabVIEW developers are not screaming those lists from the roof, but compiling them quite dutifully and making them available for consultation if you want to. They contain a lot of bugs found and also document in what bug fix version they were fixed. That's more than many others in the software industry do. That this list does't contain each and every source code change commit is not nefarious but a good thing as you would be literally drown by the result. The selection of what is listed in the bug fix list has to be done manually and that is a process where some consideration has to be applied. You find this bug world shocking, most software developers working on the actual code find it a minor thing.

Remember Hanlons razor:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

And in this case I would not even say it is stupidity but likely the desire to not create a list of 1000 things for each release that nobody in their sane mind ever will look at anyhow.

If your insinuation was true, those bug fix lists would simply not exist!

[FreddyV]

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@rolfk  ha scritto:

---

@FreddyV wrote:

You will agree with me, that this is absolutely a critical bug that needs to be fixed even on the 2023 and 2024 versions with a patch, given the impact it can have.

---

Sorry, no I do not agree that this is a very critical bug. Annoying? yes, unexpected? why not.

It's already fixed in 2024 Q3, how far back do you want NI to be obligated to fix bugs retroactively?

Unless it is a proven security bug, NI does generally only fix bugs in the current software version (exceptions have happened). You can dislike that but it is IMHO a reasonable policy.

Everybody thinks their bug is the most important. There are many more that you do not know about and accordingly will not complain about, but might be actually responsible for shutting down an electric plant that might cost someone their life. Is that more critical? Will we ever find out?

---

We all agree that there is a priority scale in bug fixing, and obviously NI cannot fix a particular bug in every version of LabVIEW.

BUT:

The copy-and-paste function has been used daily since 1975; it is one of the basic tools that is used massively by every person in the world who uses a computer system. IT HAS TO WORK.

Moreover, it is not a "missing" function but a matter of corrupting the content of the copy, which is much more serious.

If we then add that the problem insists on 2023 and early versions of 2024, which are really recent, I find your comment to be a bit misplaced.

The fact that you propose as a solution to sanitize the input is even funnier, do you realize how impronable this is?
The option of downgrading or upgrading is also definitely impractical and carries with it a huge amount of other possible problems (and costs)...

To solve a basic function like copy and paste?

I don't care how NI handles bug fixing, and whether it has the resources to list and deal with them effectively (and it seems to me it doesn't), but some types of bugs are simply not subjective.

...and I think there's no need to get philosophical...while talking to fix the poor copy-and-paste function 😅