Is malloc() or calloc() "better"?

[Michael Paul Hunter]

In article <620 at usl.usl.edu> pcb at usl.usl.edu (Peter C. Bahrs) writes:
>In article <9254 at smoke.BRL.MIL>, gwyn at smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn ) writes:
>> In article <gables.416 at umigw.miami.edu> slores%gables.span at umigw.miami.edu (Stanislaw L. Olejniczak) writes:
>> >It seems to me that most programmers, in giving examples here, use malloc()
>> >please enlighten me why is malloc so much more popular?
>>
stuff....
>What if you dynamically allocate strings and use malloc?... there may or may
>not be a \0 in string[0]...I doubt it?  Therefore an initial call to
>if (strcmp(string,""))  may or may not return true!
>
>calloc, although more time consuming (not very much) insures empty or zero
>filled memory.

ouch!!!  Anybody who uses calloc for the side effect that they can then
consider that piece of memory to be a null terminated string is asking
for a headache in the future.  What happens when the next person inherits
your code and has to speed it up?  That person changes the callocs to mallocs
and causes a bug (a naive one, but a bug).  What about if that person pulls
the *alloc out of the inner loop....your calloc only helps on the first
iteration...  I think it would be better (and faster) to malloc and set the
first element of the array to (char)NULL if you want it to be a 0 length
string....make it a SLM if you are really emphatic.

					  Mike