Re: Safe memory allocation functions

Robert Haas wrote:

> Hmm, I understood Tom to be opposing the idea of a palloc variant that
> returns NULL on failure, and I understand you to be supporting it.
> But maybe I'm confused.

Your understanding seems correct to me. I was just saying that your
description of Tom's argument to dislike the idea seemed at odds with
what he was actually saying.

> Anyway, I support it. I agree that there are
> systems (or circumstances?) where malloc is going to succeed and then
> the world will blow up later on anyway, but I don't think that means
> that an out-of-memory error is the only sensible response to a palloc
> failure; returning NULL seems like a sometimes-useful alternative.
>
> I do think that "safe" is the wrong suffix. Maybe palloc_soft_fail()
> or palloc_null() or palloc_no_oom() or palloc_unsafe().

I liked palloc_noerror() better myself FWIW.

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Álvaro Herrera http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
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