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Message-Id: <EA0C2639-FBBD-4E85-8EAE-04CEDF8A2EBD@palsenberg.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2013 09:32:55 +0100
From: Igmar Palsenberg <igmar@...senberg.com>
To: musl@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: malloc(0) behaviour
> On 14/01/2013, Rich Felker <dalias@...ifal.cx> wrote:
>> Yes, there are many good reasons. The most obvious (but stupid) one is
>> that a huge number of programs will "replace" malloc with one where
>> malloc(0) returns something other than a null pointer if the system's
>> malloc(0) returns null, and this adds both bloat and risk of
>> bugs/breakage from the replacement. But there are other much more
>> fundamental reasons too. Basically they all come down to interactions
>> between the requirements of malloc and realloc, and the fact that
>> returning a null pointer from realloc means failure (and thus that the
>> original object was not freed).
>
> Another: Null means allocation failure. As malloc ought to never fail
> to find zero bytes free, it thus makes sense to return a non-null
> pointer.
A valid pointer also means you should be able to store something. With malloc(0), you can't.
If you ask me, abort() would be a same thing to do. And no, I don't expect a decent libc to actually do
this :-)
Igmar
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