Re: [PATCH 2/4] short circuit out of a few places where we would allocate zero bytes

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 27 Dec 2005, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> 
>>Better yet, either always return NULL or allocate 1 byte in that case, to get
>>consistent behaviour.
> 
> Yes. However, if you do the "return NULL" case (which is nicest), you'll 
> have to wrap "free()" too. There are some libraries where passing "free()" 
> a NULL pointer causes a SIGSEGV.
> 
> That said, I think that would be preferable to changing the source code to 
> unnecessarily avoid zero-sized allocations. Having a "xfree()" to match 
> "xmalloc()" makes sense. 
> 

Yeah, although that might break GNU code which uses xmalloc that is 
included (GNU doesn't have xfree.)  The easiest is just to allocate 1 
byte when the user asks for 0.

Anyone knows what GNU xmalloc does?

	-hpa
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html