[vox-tech] malloc() is ... old school?

[Micah J. Cowan]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 10:15:43AM -0800, Tim Riley wrote:
> 
> 
> > The first library had malloc(). Always
> > using calloc() would be a ridiculously inefficient way to obtain
> > memory if you're going to just set it again anyway.
> 
> It might seem inefficient to set memory twice, but you're looking
> at it from the CPU's point of view. Instead, by looking at it from
> the programmer's point of view, the extra nanoseconds it takes
> to always get a clean data structure is worth hours of time savings
> by not having to trace a core dump.

You're saying that you'd rather have your program silently set the
wrong memory location than to vomit? In my experience, the earlier in
the development stage you catch a bug, the better.

What situation are you thinking of where an accidentally unset,
malloc()ed structure would cause a core dump upon access that would
not be duplicated had calloc() been used?

> But in no way were the authors of calloc() being "ridiculous" in their
> implementation.

I never claimed this. calloc() is a wonderful tool. It just should not
be used exclusively instead of malloc(), which is what the professor
claimed.

-Micah