Re: modutils-2.3.15 'insmod'

[H. Peter Anvin]

Followup to:  <[e-mail]>
By author:    Andreas Schwab <[e-mail]>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> "Richard B. Johnson" <[e-mail]> writes:
> 
> |> It is likely that malloc(0) returning a valid pointer is a bug
> |> that has prevented this problem from being observed.
> 
> It's not a bug, it's a behaviour explicitly allowed by the C standard.
> 

The bug is in xmalloc, meaning that it assumes that returning NULL is
always an error.  Presumably xmalloc should look *either* like:

void *xmalloc(size_t s)
{
	void *p = malloc(s);
	
	if ( !p && s )
		barf();
	else
		return p;
}

... or ...

void *xmalloc(size_t s)
{
	void *p;

	/* Always return a valid allocation */
	if ( s == 0 ) s = 1;
	p = malloc(s);
	
	if ( !p )
		barf();
	else
		return p;
}
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