[SystemSafety] When malloc() Never Returns NULL

[David MENTRE]

Hello,

How is it relevant to System Safety (topic of this list)? This paper is interesting but as far as I know, safety critical programs are not executed on generic OS mentioned by this paper but real-time OS or bare metal. Moreover, such programs would never do dynamic memory allocation or only at program startup. In my view, the recommendations of this paper (in particular using x family functions that assume allocation always succeed or terminate the application) are not valid in safety critical context: the handling of memory allocation failure should be considered and handled properly.

Best regards,
David Mentré 

> Le 11 mai 2023 à 12:58, Derek M Jones <derek at knosof.co.uk> a écrit :
> 
> All,
> 
> Coding guidelines have been telling developers to
> check the return value of malloc forever.
> 
> It certainly used to make a difference, but it looks
> as if out-of-memory is becoming a thing of the past,
> at least on the desktop.
> 
> "When malloc() Never Returns NULL -- Reliability as an Illusion"
> https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.08484
> 
> -- 
> Derek M. Jones           Evidence-based software engineering
> blog:https://shape-of-code.com
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