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From: joe@emacs.UUCP (Joe Chapman)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: free and malloc
Message-ID: <103@emacs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Oct-85 11:28:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: emacs.103
Posted: Thu Oct 10 11:28:32 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Oct-85 05:17:14 EDT
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>> Has anyone out there REALLY used "free"?  I'm very curious about this...

Well, I've used free immediately after doing a malloc; the routines in
question needed a considerable amount of space for some nonsensical
operation, and in the convolution which ensued there were several
different places where the function might legitimately return.  Since
free doesn't trash the space, but merely makes it available for re-use,
I wasn't living so perilously as it might appear.

I should probably caution the folks at home against trying this; were I
rewriting that stuff today I'd certainly be a bit more conventional and
less obscure (i.e., put the free at the bottom of the function and goto
it), but I was young then...

--
Joe Chapman	decvax!cca!emacs!joe	joe@cca-unix
	"The dubious practices admitted to herein are no longer
	 even my own, and the fabric of the software with which
	 I and my employer are now associated is devoid of even
	 a suggestion of them."