[Python-Dev] Problem with the memory docs (original) (raw)

Martin v. Loewis martin@v.loewis.de
05 Apr 2002 20🔞35 +0200

Tim Peters <tim.one@comcast.net> writes:

[Martin] > I think I'm now getting to the root of your confusion. Calling > malloc(1) is not what Guido wants. Instead, he wants that > pymalloc(0) returns a non-null pointer "normally".

And there's no better way to be 100% clear about what that means than to specify a trivial implementation that satisfies it.

There could be, but perhaps there isn't. Such an implementation is an overspecification: If a platform already guarantees that malloc(0) acts as if it was passed a non-zero argument, there is no need to pass 1; passing 1 may have undesirable side effects.

Regards, Martin