Re: [PATCH 1/2] sideband.c: Use xmalloc() instead of variable-sized arrays.

> Johannes Sixt <j.sixt@viscovery.net> writes:
> 
> > From: Johannes Sixt <johannes.sixt@telecom.at>
> >
> > 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 <johannes.sixt@telecom.at>
> > ---
> >  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...