Question

In my code almost every function has one or more malloc calls, and each time I have to do something like:

char *ptr = (char *)malloc(sizeof(char) * some_int);
if (ptr == NULL) {
    fprintf(stderr, "failed to allocate memory.\n");
    return -1;
}

that’s four extra lines of code and if I add them everytime after I use a malloc, the length of my code will increase a lot.. so is there an elegant way to deal with this?

Thank you so much!!

Answer 1

Sorry, but there’s nothing you can do about that in C. Except… gasp… wrap it all in a macro which will automate the if check and allow you to write custom error-handling code each time. There, I said it.

Seriously, C isn’t meant to provide conveniences like this. If you don’t mind exiting the program on the spot, you can wrap it in a function of course that does exit when the allocation fails — but that’s no general solution.