It is true. The malloc() call itself almost never fails. The problem lies not in allocation, but in later use. For example, consider the string.h functions that return a pointer, strcat() and friends. It is the perfect function if you want to implement a buffer overflow. To mitigate the situation, strncat() was created to limit the size of the src buffer, but forces the coder to calculate n such that sizeof(dst) >= strlen(dst) + n + 1. At least strncpy() prevents an endless overwrite should the src string not be nul-terminated, but it lacks the bounds check on dst. As a result, strlcpy() was created to specify the size of the dst buffer in order to prevent the buffer overflow and to guarantee dst is nul-terminated. Yay! Except, it didn't retain strncpy()'s src string length limit, and if src is not nuul-terminated, then a missed terminating null byte might copy the keys to the kingdom into the src string and subsequently publish them on the Internet.
Oh, but the malloc() worked flawlessly.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
