ECALLOC(3)

✨ ECALLOC(3) ✨

okay bestie, we're in section 3 of the manual (library functions, the fun one 💅) and today's main character is a whole little squad of wrapper functions: ecalloc, emalloc, eread, erealloc, esetenv, estrdup, and ewrite. they live in the roken library and they are, collectively, the exit-on-failure wrapper functions. yes that's the whole vibe: do the thing, and if the thing fails, we are LEAVING. 🚪💨

📚 LIBRARY

the roken library — that's libroken, link it with -lroken 🎀

🦋 SYNOPSIS

#include <roken.h>

void *
ecalloc(size_t number, size_t size);

void *
emalloc(size_t sz);

ssize_t
eread(int fd, void *buf, size_t nbytes);

void *
erealloc(void *ptr, size_t sz);

void
esetenv(const char *var, const char *val, int rewrite);

char *
estrdup(const char *str);

ssize_t
ewrite(int fd, const void *buf, size_t nbytes);

💖 DESCRIPTION

okay so here's the tea ☕ — these functions do exactly the same thing as their non-e siblings. same energy, same args, same job. the difference? if there's an error, they print a message with errx(3) and then they exit. like, no recovery, no second chances, no "let me handle this gracefully". it's giving we die like legends 😭

and for eread and ewrite, bestie, that goes for partial data too — not just full-on errors. partial read? partial write? still an exit. the function said "all or nothing" and it MEANT it. 👑

so when is this actually useful? when your application doesn't need a more advanced failure mode. you know the type — the program where if the malloc fails, everything is over anyway, so why write 40 lines of error handling. lowkey iconic honestly. 🫶

👀 SEE ALSO

• read(2)
• write(2)
• calloc(3)
• errx(3)
• malloc(3)
• realloc(3)
• setenv(3)
• strdup(3)

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one comes to you from HEIMDAL, dated August 14, 2003 — a certified classic, still slaying 💅✨ bye love u, go read your error messages 🎀