malloc(0)

[Zack Weinberg]

On Mon, 1 Jun 1998 13:54:21 -0400, Roland McGrath wrote:
>My recollection is that we made it that way quite a long time ago because
>existing programs assumed that behavior (malloc(0) != 0).  You have cited
>no advantage whatsoever in changing it.

I was thinking that (a) it would flush out bugs, and (b) a program written
to assume that realloc(ptr, 0) is equivalent to free(ptr) would leak memory:
small quantities, but potentially significant.

If it's one of those things that is near-impossible to change because it
would break everything, then nevermind.

zw