'new' behavior when malloc() fails

'new' behavior when malloc() fails

[David Whedon]

I'm using the gnu c++ compiler.  The question is related to the 'new' operator.

Sometimes the calls to __builtin_new (g++ generates these calls) return NULL
because there is no memory to be had (I'm working on an embedded system).
Unfortunately, the code that g++ generates doesn't check the return value of
__builtin_new before calling the class constructor.  

I can only assume that this is by design.

Calling the constructor when the system was unable to allocate memory for the
class is bad?  What am I missing?

This may be a c++ specific question, and may not be gcc-specific, if so I'm 
happy to ask on a c++ list.

Thank you,

David Whedon

Re: 'new' behavior when malloc() fails

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Feb 27, 2001, David Whedon <dwhedon@gordian.com> wrote:

> Sometimes the calls to __builtin_new (g++ generates these calls)
> return NULL

IIRC, only old releases of GCC do.  Newer releases have the behavior
dictated by the C++ Standard, which is to throw an exception.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva   Enjoy Guarana', see http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat GCC Developer                  aoliva@{cygnus.com, redhat.com}
CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp        oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
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