From: Junio C Hamano Date: Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:41:26 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] sideband.c: Use xmalloc() instead of variable-sized arrays. Message-ID: <7v4pdotdtl.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: <4783A3B2.3060801@viscovery.net> Johannes Sixt writes: > From: Johannes Sixt > > How come we got along with this not very portable construct for so long? > Probably because the array sizes were computed from the results of > strlen() of string constants. Anyway, a follow-up patch will make the > lengths really non-constant. > > Signed-off-by: Johannes Sixt > --- > sideband.c | 14 ++++++++++++-- > 1 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) > > diff --git a/sideband.c b/sideband.c > index 756bbc2..513d7b3 100644 > --- a/sideband.c > +++ b/sideband.c > @@ -19,7 +19,10 @@ int recv_sideband(const char *me, int in_stream, int out, int err) > { > unsigned pf = strlen(PREFIX); > unsigned sf = strlen(SUFFIX); > - char buf[pf + LARGE_PACKET_MAX + sf + 1]; > + char *buf, *save; > + > + save = xmalloc(sf); > + buf = xmalloc(pf + LARGE_PACKET_MAX + sf + 1); I have to wonder if the malloc() overhead is small enough compared to the network bandwidth to make a two malloc-free pairs per packet a non-issue...