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From: scjones@sdrc.UUCP (Larry Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c,comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: realloc
Summary: Required by ANSI
Keywords: realloc NULL
Message-ID: <681@sdrc.UUCP>
Date: 29 Mar 89 22:02:25 GMT
References: <10170@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Organization: Structural Dynamics Research Corp., Cincinnati
Lines: 17

In article <10170@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>, scs@adam.pika.mit.edu (Steve Summit) writes:
> Today, for the third time in half as many years, I got badly
> burned, and wasted lots of time, due to a bug in a certain
> vendor's implementation of realloc.  It is an apparently well-
> kept secret that realloc is supposed to behave gracefully at
> a slightly special-cased boundary point: when handed a NULL
> pointer and a nonzero size, it acts essentially as a malloc.

And when handed a non-NULL pointer and a zero size, it acts like
free.  This behavior is required by the draft ANSI Standard.

----
Larry Jones                         UUCP: uunet!sdrc!scjones
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