Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!columbia!read.columbia.edu!kearns
From: kearns@read.columbia.edu (Steve Kearns)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: LSC Storage bugs
Message-ID: <5295@columbia.edu>
Date: 7 Feb 88 21:45:00 GMT
Sender: nobody@columbia.edu
Reply-To: kearns@cs.columbia.edu
Organization: Columbia University Department of Computer Science
Lines: 29
Keywords: LSC, malloc, bugs

In debugging a program of mine, I discovered that LightSpeed C has 
several serious problems with the memory management routines.

Specifically:
(*)  Their malloc routine calls NewPtr, but passes an int instead of a long.
Since this routine seems to work, there is probably a "feature" of the 
glue routines that make this a non-problem in practice.  

(*)  The realloc routine does not try hard enough.  Realloc shrinks or 
expands a block of memory. According to the unix
definition of realloc (and the description in lSC), realloc can actually
return a pointer to a new area of memory, as long as it copies the relevant
contents of the old block over.  This is often neccessary if the block of 
memory is expanding.  However, the LSC realloc routine calls SetPtrSize,
a toolbox routine which doesn't consider moving it if it is unable to grow.
Therefore, realloc fails much more often then neccessary.  

(*)  the free routine just calls the cfree routine, when it should
actually return the value of the cfree routine.  

LSC  is a great product; I have noticed, though, that in most compilers the
libraries are an afterthought, often delegated to inexperienced programmers.
Especially with memory management routines this is bad.  (I found even
worse problems in Aztec C's memory management, for example, several years ago)

If anyone needs the code that fixes this I will be glad to supply it, 
although with the above description it should be easy to fix. 

-steve