Re: CVS commit: src/libexec/comsat

[Jarle Greipsland <jarle%uninett.no@localhost>]

Bill Studenmund <wrstuden%NetBSD.org@localhost> writes:
> On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 itojun%iijlab.net@localhost wrote:
> > >It seems to me that we've introduced extra complexity for absolutely no
> > >reason at all.  Because the program exits immediately in the failure
> > >case (without jumping through a pile of clean-up functions), there's
> > >no chance that an invalid buffer or buffersize will be used in further
> > >code.
> >
> >     if we leave bad practice in code people would cut-and-paste it and use
> >     it, causing bad mistakes.  so i am being pedantic.
> 
> Wouldn't it be sufficient to just add a comment saying that this behavior
> is ok because we exit if there's a failure?

What if an application had registered one or more functions with
atexit(3)?  Granted, the comsat application does not, and it is
fairly small and can be understood fairly easily.  However, for
bigger applications, this might not be the case, and some
programmer might decide to introduce the clearing of memory on
exit using an atexit-function, without performing an audit of the
code pattern for all instances of realloc() in the application.

                                        -jarle