(PR#1604) Re: Platform-specific: simple assignments in Rprofile

On Tue, 28 May 2002 NEFTH@pacbell.net wrote:

This only happens on platforms with a faulty implementation
of realloc(). Some C libraries do not allow realloc() to be
called with a NULL pointer to resize.

What other platforms give the problem?

The behaviour R assumes is required by the ISO C89 standard (at least
according to Lewine's book). Would it not be better to fix realloc rather
than R: there are many alternative implementations of malloc out there (and
R uses one for Windows).

One issue is that realloc is used in several R packages on CRAN, and
quite possibly in others.  These are likely to assume standard-conformant
behaviour.  (It is used in other places within the R sources too, but I
assume you checked all of those.)