Topic: NetworkGamingMessages::get_message() throws random strings at format()

I've noticed many format() error messages in the crash logs in #5548 and #5555. I tried to track them down, and I think they come from NetworkGamingMessages::get_message() trying arguments in turn whether they can be used as format strings with format(). That doesn't look safe at all, does it?

With format() caching format strings, I'm afraid it may be even worse.

edit:

I tried to track down callers, and I don't think it is supposed to receive format strings as arguments. So the strange practice is only there because the message templates in the map ngmessages have different number of arguments. My naive way of refactoring would be to change the map (private to this code) and add the number of arguments for each template string manually. Then instead of trial and error the proper format() call could be just looked up.

Now I have to go, so I'll try it later if it's OK.

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Yes, I know. My concern is that normally we would have more or less a fixed set of format strings, but here all kind of argument strings are treated as format strings, each of them being added to the cache. But OK, that probably shouldn't be a big issue.

I tried to review once again in format/tree.h whether throwing these exceptions is safe in the regard of properly cleaning up, but I don't really know how to do it.

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