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> Many programmers, including myself, have gotten out of the habit of doing this on modern systems like Linux, because a malloc() call always succeeds, regardle

by jart 2y ago

> Many programmers, including myself, have gotten out of the habit of doing this on modern systems like Linux, because a malloc() call always succeeds, regardless how much memory is available. Not if you use setrusage().

fuhsnn 2y ago
>setrusage() Is it old version of setrlimit()? Couldn't locate it in any of the man.*bsd.org.
- jart 2y ago
  My bad, that's what I intended to say.
  - fuhsnn 2y ago
    I did found plenty of docs and books mentioning setrusage() though, like a proper Mandela Effect.
jmclnx 2y ago
Not me :) What I develop I always make sure I test on NetBSD and OpenBSD. That keeps me honest and those systems will find issues that Linux does not care about. I found many issues by testing on those systems. Also, ignoring malloc() returns is dangerous if you want to port your application to a UNIX like AIX.
- antirez 2y ago
  Ignoring failures is a bad idea, but in many applications quitting on malloc() retiring NULL is the most sensibile thing to do. Many, but not all kinds of applications.
guenthert 2y ago
> Not if you use setrusage(). Or if memory overcommit is disabled or an 'unreasonable' amount of memory was requested. So, no, malloc() doesn't always succeed.