Eric Blake <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > According to Ben Pfaff on 8/22/2007 5:19 PM: >> Bruno Haible <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> >>> Jim Meyering wrote: >>>> A *lot* of code expects malloc and realloc to set errno when they fail. >>> Such code is not portable to plain ISO C 99 systems. >> >> We could extend gnulib's existing malloc/realloc wrappers to >> ensure that malloc/realloc set errno when they fail, if it is >> worthwhile to do so. > > I would somewhat like this idea - it is much nicer assuming that malloc > reliably sets errno to ENOMEM on failure than having to patch all callers > of malloc to do the same.
Yes. This is a fundamental goal of gnulib: If there is some portability problem, don't penalize *all* software and all systems. Instead, keep the client software clean, and penalize only the systems that have the problem. The losing system (mingw, in this case) can endure a little overhead in malloc/realloc wrappers. That's far better than polluting all malloc-using application code with obscure, seemingly-unnecessary code to set errno upon malloc failure.
