Re: [gpsd-dev] [PATCH 2/2] hacking: mention strdup in the no-malloc section.

[Eric S. Raymond]

Fred Wright <address@hidden>:
> 
> On Mon, 28 Mar 2016, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> 
> > To avoid having to pedabtically overspecify these edge cases we can say
> > that (a) if it requres a mabual free(), we don't use it, and (b) use of 
> > other
> > malloc callers is considered potentially harmful and has to be explicitly
> > approved during review.
> 
> One way to look at it is that the problem isn't malloc() - it's free().
> In any circumstance where it's reasonable to *intentionally* call malloc()
> without free(), then there's no risk of a memory leak. :-) Also, blaming
> it on free() covers things like strdup(), which mention needing to free()
> the result at some point.
> 
> Fred Wright

That's a pretty good point.  I wouldn't be hostile to normative language
made from this.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>