Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!allegra!princeton!udel!gatech!hao!noao!arizona!naucse!jdc
From: jdc@naucse.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: VAX C problems with VMS 4.6
Summary: C RTL free is different
Message-ID: <565@naucse.UUCP>
Date: 10 Feb 88 14:15:00 GMT
References: <93*x_haraldsen@use.uio.uninett>
Organization: Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ
Lines: 23
Posted: Wed Feb 10 09:15:00 1988

In article <93*x_haraldsen@use.uio.uninett>, x_haraldsen%use.uio.uninett@TOR.NTA.NO (Tore Haraldsen USE/UiO) writes:
> My old C utilities (among them lzcomp/dcmp are failing after we
> installed VMS 4.6.
> 
> I have traced the problems down to a sequence of
> 
> malloc ... realloc ... free

I had a similar problem with Todd Allen's MAKE program.  I thought there
was a problem with the run-time library, but it turned out that free was
being called more than once on an old malloc pointer.  As far as I know the
old library routine had a "feature" that allowed free to be "harmless" if
the block was previously deallocated.  The new library seems to treat such
cases prejudicially.

My conclusion was that there really wasn't a "bug" in malloc/free, just a
new behavior that turned up new run-time problems in code that needed fixing.
If I'm wrong I'd like to hear about it.  (I did get a fix for an ungetc
problem in 4.6--fix is in 4.7).
-- 
	John Campbell               ...!arizona!naucse!jdc

	unix?  Sure send me a dozen, all different colors.