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Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2020 19:35:23 -0600
From: Ariadne Conill <ariadne@...eferenced.org>
To: musl@...ts.openwall.com, Rich Felker <dalias@...c.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4] implement recallocarray(3)
Hello,
On 2020-08-02 18:45, Rich Felker wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 02, 2020 at 04:54:26PM -0600, Ariadne Conill wrote:
>> This OpenBSD extension is similar to reallocarray(3), but
>> zero-initializes the new memory area.
>>
>> This extension is placed in _BSD_SOURCE, like
>> reallocarray(3).
>>
>> Changes from v3:
>> - use calloc() instead of realloc() and always copy
>> - explicitly zero old memory block
>> - restore overflow checking for old size
>>
>> Changes from v2:
>> - drop overflow checking for old size
>>
>> Changes from v1:
>> - use realloc() instead of reallocarray()
>
> Can we finish discussion of questions raised before making new
> versions with changes that haven't even been agreed upon? I asked
> about EINVAL so we could determine if it's expected and if it's
> reasonable to copy; that's not a demand to remove it. And the new
> memset before free is a complete no-op. If there's a contract to
> behave like explicit_bzero on the old memory, we may want to honor
> that if we implement recallocarray, but that likely makes it entirely
> unsuitable to the purpose you want it for and will bring back the
> atrociously bad apk performance you previously saw with mallocng if
> you use it there, since each increment of array size will incur a
> whole memcpy of the existing array (quadratic time) rather than copies
> only occuring a logarithmic number of times (yielding O(n log n)
> overall) as would happen with realloc.
At this time, there are no plans to use recallocarray(3) in apk, but
that would only be a problem if used in a hot path. I don't envision
any hot path in apk where we would ever use recallocarray(3). For
managing buffers, we would continue using realloc() as we do now, since
it's all bytes anyway.
*My* use case for recallocarray(3) is simply that I want a
reallocarray() that also zeros the new members, *and* I do not want to
reimplement that function every time I write a program, because this is
the sort of thing a libc should ideally provide in 2020. It provides
calloc() after all, why not a realloc version of it?
In order to do that, you have to have a similar interface to what
recallocarray(3) uses, because you need to know where to start zeroing.
There's not any way around it that is also interposable.
I do agree that the hardness guarantees of the OpenBSD version implement
significant overhead, and if we don't provide them, there will be some
heartbleed type bug down the road.
So, I stick with v4 patch behavior, because I do not wish for anyone to
shoot themselves in the foot.
Ariadne
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