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From: Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: avoiding strdup()
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2024 15:31:39 -0700
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Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com> writes:
> On 12/03/2024 01:20, Keith Thompson wrote:
>> Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com> writes:
[...]
>> If I withdraw 20 pounds from my bank, I'll bet you that 20 pounds
>> that the bank still checks whether it has the money.  I'd rather
>> write correct code than code that almost certainly happens to work.
>> Sure, strdup() is unlikely to fail-- but I'm going to check the
>> result.
>> 
>>> And how often do banks fail, actually, and how often does government
>>> take action when it's heading that way, but nowhere near failing yet?
>> The government isn't going to intervene when your laptop is running
>> low on memory.
>> 
> No, it's an analogy. You run lots of apps gobbling lots of memory, and
> maybe a program won't launch or thngs start to slow or a warning comes 
> up, and you realise that soon the program of interest might run out of
> memory, and so you shut other things down so that that doesn't happen.
> And so it's pretty rare to actually run out of memory unless the
> program isn't correct and there is a leak.

Are you relying in a person sitting in front of the computer and
noticing that memory is running low?  The vast majority of software
doesn't have someone watching it.

I agree that an allocation failure in strdup() is unlikely.  Are you
suggesting that that means you needn't bother checking the result?

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
Working, but not speaking, for Medtronic
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */