Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Welcome to Software Development on Codidact!

Will you help us build our independent community of developers helping developers? We're small and trying to grow. We welcome questions about all aspects of software development, from design to code to QA and more. Got questions? Got answers? Got code you'd like someone to review? Please join us.

Comments on Is partial allocation of an object Undefined Behavior?

Post

Is partial allocation of an object Undefined Behavior?

+8
−0

Is it valid to partly allocate an object, as long as you only use the allocated part of it?

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

struct s {
	int i[100];
};

int main(void)
{
	struct s *s;

	s = malloc(50 * sizeof(int));

	s->i[30] = 7;
	printf("%d\n", s->i[30]);

	free(s);
}
alx@debian$ gcc --version | head -n1
gcc (Debian 12.2.0-13) 12.2.0
alx@debian$ clang --version | head -n1
Debian clang version 14.0.6
alx@debian$ clang -Weverything malloc.c -O3
alx@debian$ clang -Weverything malloc.c
alx@debian$ gcc -Wall -Wextra malloc.c -fanalyzer
alx@debian$ gcc -Wall -Wextra malloc.c -fanalyzer -O3
alx@debian$ ./a.out 
7

The compiler don't seem to complain. It seems to work.

I didn't find anything in the standard that makes this code Undefined Behavior. However, I still suspect of it: the last half of the array within the structure is not allocated. Is it well-defined?

History
Why does this post require attention from curators or moderators?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

2 comment threads

If `i` was a flexible array member, everything would be fine. (2 comments)
Going the other direction, assigning a struct pointer to a block of memory allocated much larger than... (1 comment)
If `i` was a flexible array member, everything would be fine.
appguru‭ wrote almost 2 years ago

If i was a flexible array member, everything would be fine.

alx‭ wrote over 1 year ago · edited over 1 year ago

Is it? I just came to this question again because of flexible array members.

See https://gustedt.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/flexible-array-member for more context.

The allocation is usually one of these:

malloc(sizeof(s) + sizeof_member(s, fam[0]) * N);
malloc(offsetof(s, fam) + sizeof_member(s, fam[0]) * N)

In some cases, sizeof(s) can be larger than offsetof(s, fam), as the padding can go beyond the FAM (see the link above). In those cases, the allocation with sizeof(s) is wasting a few bytes, and offsetof(s, fam) calculates the exact size that will be used.

But what if you only allocate a small FAM and offsetof(s, fam) + sizeof_member(s, fam[0]) * 1 is smaller than sizeof(s)? It depends on the answer to this question: if allocating less is just fine, then you don't need to worry about; if not, you'll need to resort to

malloc(MAX(sizeof(s), offsetof(s, fam) + sizeof_member(s, fam[0]) * N));

which is really inconvenient.