Re: [PATCH 2/3] scratch_buffer: new module

[Paul Eggert]

On 09/02/2017 02:11 AM, Paul Eggert wrote:
> > struct scratch_buffer depends on a GNU C extension:
> > assignment to an object changes its dynamic type.  It is not standard C.
> >   Standard C only allows one way to allocate untyped memory, and that is
> > malloc.
>
> That should not be a problem, as Gnulib code regularly breaks those 
> standard-C rules when it comes to memory allocation.

in looking at the current Gnulib glob.c again, my previous email was too 
pessimistic. Gnulib glob.c accesses the stack-allocated objects in 
question only via char * pointers, and standard C (C11 section 6.5 
paragraph 7 last line) has an exception for these accesses that makes 
the glob.c code valid. So we should be OK even on theoretical platforms 
that insist on strict conformance here.

Here's the Gnulib commit that the above analysis refers to:

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/commit/?id=5f7d5f2b78d54258e8e2a41596bba0e123c75de4