Patch: malloc function attribute

Jeffrey A Law law@cygnus.com
Mon Nov 29 23:39:00 GMT 1999


  In message < 19991129074845D.mitchell@codesourcery.com >you write:
  > I believe that if you know something about your realloc
  > implementation, then you can know that realloc will return the same
  > pointer.  So, I can imagine something like:
  > 
  >   int *ip = (int *) malloc (8);
  >   int *ip2 = (int* ) realloc (ip, 16);
  > 
  > and that the programmer knows that `ip' and `ip2' *are* aliases.  I've
  > just looked at the C standard and I don't see any reason to believe
  > that using `ip' in this code yields undefined behavior,
Egad.  I'll accept this.  I don't have anything to counter it.  With this
in mind we need to not consider realloc or xrealloc as being malloc-like.
Bummer.

  > Maybe I'm off base, but I thought that the malloc attribute said the
  > new pointer doesn't alias anything.
You're correct.
jeff



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