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Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 20:06:51 -0500
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf AT redhat DOT com>
To: cygwin-developers AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: failed malloc()?
Message-ID: <20001125200651.B5139@redhat.com>
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References: <Pine DOT NEB DOT 4 DOT 10 DOT 10011251517570 DOT 14159-100000 AT cesium DOT clock DOT org>
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In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.4.10.10011251517570.14159-100000@cesium.clock.org>; from matt@use.net on Sat, Nov 25, 2000 at 03:41:59PM -0800

On Sat, Nov 25, 2000 at 03:41:59PM -0800, Matt wrote:
>I've started reviewing some of the winsup code and had a question as to
>how to most properly correct unchecked pointers. That is, I know to add a
>statement to check the freshly created/passed pointer, but not what to do
>in the instance that pointer is NULL. 
>
>Some places in the cygwin code do a system_printf() which is what I will
>assume is desired, but wanted to check to make sure what the
>standard/preferred way of handling such things is (if there is one).
>
>Here one of the sections of code I am looking at (cygcheck.c:91,92):
>  paths[num_paths] = (char *) malloc (maxlen + 1);
>  memcpy (paths[num_paths], s, maxlen);

Um.  That's not cygwin, that's cygcheck.  Proper programming practice would
be to check every single malloc and issue an error if there is a problem.

You can't use system_printf in this case since it isn't cygwin that you're
looking at.

It is usually a sign of some severe memory corruption if a program like
cygcheck isn't able to allocate its own buffers so I am not too worried
that there is no protection in this code.

cgf