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Another bug: if `maxlen <= 0`, then it will overwrite the character before the start of `ptr`. And then there's the infinite loop if `maxlen > INT_MAX` on 64-bit machines. And maybe `out + skipped` can wrap as well?

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One more: if an error occurs while reading the first character, the function returns -out = 0, which violates the documented behavior that errors are negative, and means a caller can’t distinguish between a failing to read and reading an empty file.

maxlen is meant to be a constant provided by a #define, so I wouldn't be worried about things going haywire if maxlen is a weird value.

But C-like code in general makes me nervous in parsers, since there's many ways things can go wrong and C is inherently fail-deadly if you make a mistake.

Coding in C doesn't mean that you shouldn't create a layering of appropriate abstractions.

The problem is that writing abstractions in C is more difficult than virtually any other practical language.

That's a wild claim. Why do you think is that?

What is an abstraction and what do you need to code it?

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