Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ogicse!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!milton!khan
From: khan@milton.acs.washington.edu (I Wish)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: FREE
Summary: calloc() isn't really portable
Keywords: calloc, portable, zero
Message-ID: <2263@milton.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 5 Mar 90 16:47:10 GMT
References: <1990Mar1.140829.17199@druid.uucp> <2353@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Reply-To: khan@milton.acs.washington.edu (I Wish)
Organization: Barbarian Driving School, University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 22

In article <2353@dataio.Data-IO.COM> bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright) writes:

>The reasons are similar to the arguments about not using goto. calloc works
>fine and is portable. Whether or not you use it is a religious issue.

[...]

>And no, I don't care about machines where 0.0 and NULL are not 0 bit
>patterns. If someday I should be unfortunate enough to run across one,
>I'll worry about it then!

Calloc will set up a zero-bit pattern on any machine....  if you are
depending on this meaning floating-point zero or the null pointer, then
it won't do that some machines, so it can't be called "portable."

(As an aside, does a VAX, with floating-point descriptors or whatever
 it uses, treat zero-bytes as float 0.0?)
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Erik Seaberg (khan@milton.u.washington.edu)