On 03/22/2014 04:00 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
That argument is entirely bogus, as it considers only one possible way
in which the call could be wrong; a way that is of very low probability
in PG usage, since we include <stdlib.h> in our core headers. Besides
which, as noted in the page itself, most modern compilers would warn
anyway if you forgot the inclusion.
Apart from what the page says, I also think of casting malloc() as bad
style and felt the need to bring this up. But since you pointed out why
you don't want to remove the cast, I withdraw my previous suggestion.
On the other side, coding with the explicit cast helps guard against far
more dangerous coding errors, which the compiler will *not* help you with.
What if myextra is actually of type "int64 *"? In that case you probably
meant to make enough space for an int64 not an int. But without the cast,
you won't be told you did anything wrong. This is a particular hazard if
you change your mind later on about the type of myextra. (A colleague
at Salesforce got burnt in exactly that way, just a couple days ago.)
So perhaps this alternative:
myextra = malloc(sizeof *myextra);
PS.
Coding style matters to me, but I was and still am far from insisting on
anything.
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