Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!meissner
From: meissner@xyzzy.UUCP (Usenet Administration)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: lint warning messages with malloc()
Message-ID: <1715@xyzzy.UUCP>
Date: 7 Nov 88 01:12:19 GMT
References: <142@cjsa.WA.COM> <355@marob.MASA.COM>
Reply-To: meissner@xyzzy.UUCP (Michael Meissner)
Organization: Data General (Languages @ Research Triangle Park, NC.)
Lines: 17

In article <355@marob.MASA.COM> daveh@marob.masa.com (Dave Hammond) writes:
	/* stuff about lint giving errors calling malloc deleted */
| The program code is not at fault.  The problem is that lint does not
| know about malloc returning a suitably aligned pointer, therefore
| it complains.  You could do some fancy declaration footwork and declare
| 
| X *malloc();

No, No, No, No, No, No!  There are implementations of C on word-based
machines, which use different representations for different types of
pointers.  Since the library routine malloc returns a char *, and you have
declared to return X *, you will get undefined behvior.  This is NOT
guaranteed by K&R, H&S, or X3J11.
-- 
Michael Meissner, Data General.

Uucp:	...!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!meissner
Arpa:	meissner@dg-rtp.DG.COM   (or) meissner%dg-rtp.DG.COM@relay.cs.net