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<== Date ==> <== Thread ==>

Subject: Re: mallocMustSucceed( 0 ) non-portable
From: Eric Norum <[email protected]>
To: Till Straumann <[email protected]>
Cc: EPICS Tech-Talk <[email protected]>, Sheng Peng <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 18:25:36 -0600
Should callocMustSucceed accept a 0 count, too?  e.g. replace
if(mem==0) {
with
         if(mem==0 && size!=0 && count!= 0) {

Of course this means that callocMustSucceed and mallocMustSucceed can return a NULL pointer, which they currently never do.....

On Jan 30, 2006, at 5:58 PM, Till Straumann wrote:

Sheng Peng recently discovered that

callocMustSucceed(0, x)

(a request for zero amount of memory)
succeeds on linux but fails on RTEMS.

(This is because according to the ISO C and IEEE 1003.1 standard
the allocator may either return NULL [rtems] or a unique
pointer that is acceptable to free() [linux] in the case
of a zero 'size' argument)

IMO, the EPICS implementation needs to be fixed to
give consistent behavior and the API should define
whether it is legal to request zero memory (with
the side-effect of callocMustSucceed() returning
a bogus or NULL pointer which probably is against
its purpose) or not (with the possible side-effect
of breaking code).

My suggestion would be replacing the

if (mem==0)

tests by

if (mem==0 && size != 0)

thus legalizing mallocMustSucceed(0) on all platforms.

-- Till


-- 

Eric Norum <[email protected]>

Advanced Photon Source                     

Argonne National Laboratory

(630) 252-4793





Replies:
Re: mallocMustSucceed( 0 ) non-portable Till Straumann
References:
mallocMustSucceed( 0 ) non-portable Till Straumann

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