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Re: [fetchmail] about that fetchmail imap message count vulnerability and alloca()

2002-07-04 05:44:00
Em Thu, Jul 04, 2002 at 01:18:52AM +0200, Matthias Andree escreveu:
So, at least with linux's glibc and gcc, alloca never fails. Never.

That's (sort of) documented, look into the output of

info libc "Disadvantages of Alloca"

   These are the disadvantages of `alloca' in comparison with `malloc':

   * If you try to allocate more memory than the machine can provide,
     you don't get a clean error message.  Instead you get a fatal

So, what's the point in using it anyway? I didn't get a segfault alloca()ting
1Gb of memory, but the next printf() in my sample program crashed. Isn't
that too much instability for fetchmail?