Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!tank!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: effect of free()
Message-ID: <19490@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 9 Sep 89 04:13:49 GMT
References: <319@cubmol.BIO.COLUMBIA.EDU> <3756@buengc.BU.EDU> <10817@riks.csl.sony.co.jp>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 13

In article <10817@riks.csl.sony.co.jp> diamond@csl.sony.co.jp (Norman Diamond)
writes:
>... a freed pointer is still valid in a call to realloc
>(as long as there are no intervening *alloc calls), and the data still
>have to be sitting in limbo, not really quite freed yet.

This is a feature of certain Unix implementations, and is not true in
general.  (It is even false in some Unix implementations.  It was, more
or less, a bit of sloppiness that got documented and hence labelled
Official, and then it was too late to fix it painlessly.)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris