Re: [Bug-gnulib] linebuffer.c bug

[Paul Eggert]

Simon Josefsson <address@hidden> writes:

> it may be good to document that readlinebuffer() never return
> anything other than NULL or the input linebuffer parameter,

That's already in the comment just before readlinebuffer, isn't it?

> Should the 'struct linebuffer *' be allocated by the application or by
> linebuffer.c?  Right now the code free the pointer, but it never
> allocate it, which seems like a bad idea.

Yes, it's bogus.  I don't know of any program that uses freebuffer;
coreutils simply invokes 'free' itself.  The least intrusive change is
to change freebuffer to not free its argument; that will at worst
cause a memory leak in the (nonexistent?) programs that use it.  So I
installed this.  (Hmm, maybe freebuffer's argument should be const *
now?  But I didn't do that.)

2003-09-24  Paul Eggert  <address@hidden>

        * linebuffer.c (freebuffer): Don't free the argument, just
        the buffer associated with the argument.  Bug reported by
        Simon Josefsson.

Index: linebuffer.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/gnulib/gnulib/lib/linebuffer.c,v
retrieving revision 1.15
retrieving revision 1.16
diff -p -u -r1.15 -r1.16
--- linebuffer.c        16 Sep 2003 20:00:38 -0000      1.15
+++ linebuffer.c        24 Sep 2003 20:56:42 -0000      1.16
@@ -87,11 +87,10 @@ readlinebuffer (struct linebuffer *lineb
   return linebuffer;
 }
 
-/* Free linebuffer LINEBUFFER and its data, all allocated with malloc. */
+/* Free the buffer that was allocated for linebuffer LINEBUFFER.  */
 
 void
 freebuffer (struct linebuffer *linebuffer)
 {
   free (linebuffer->buffer);
-  free (linebuffer);
 }