assert ( malloc...

A question for you, Anon.

If you watch at malloc() manpage you can notice that the function may return NULL in some cases (i.e. errors or 0-sized allocation). How do you face this issue?

I noticed that many programmers check the return value and manage error routines for it, while other just assert() the return value not to be NULL.

Also in C++ by the way you use the new operator without taking care about the return value (I guess it's asserted to be not NULL under the hood, is it?)

What is your opinion?

>>62
that's been discussed to death on comp.lang.c:
Before you repeat that the claim, which has been frequently made in this thread, that LIFO semantics are mandatory, please consider the following implementation:

It allocates and deallocates space for activation records. It makes sure that it always allocates a given record before the start of the lifetime of the variables stored in that record, and it makes sure that it never deallocates them until after the end of the lifetime of those variables, but it does not always carry out the allocations and deallocations in the same order as a LIFO mechanism would.

What requirement of the C standard would such an implementation violate?
This question is interesting because it relies only on the text of the Standard, and tells something about all possible C implementations. The Standard does not define the term "stack", as has been said, but we can certainly make inferences from the text of the Standard. The Standard's requirements on the lifetime of variables are very loose, and if the implementation wishes, it can make every variable exist from the start to the end of the program. Even the case of multiple instances of local variables in a recursive function can be catered for when we realise that C doesn't guarantee infinite recursion depth.

I can also imagine a C implementation which provides closures as an extension and as a result has a "spaghetti stack" which is certainly not a true stack. I believe this shows that C does not require a stack.
Also, what about an implementation that uses two stacks, one for return addresses and a separate stack for automatic variables? This could fully conform and would have major advantages, such as preventing buffer overflows from overwriting the return address. On such an implementation what would you mean by "the stack"?