calloc

That's also where I saw calloc.c - A portable implementation of calloc.

When you use malloc the 100th byte is filled with random garbage, while with calloc you get something consistent.

So unless you calloc() or memset() your newly allocated memory, overallocation won't really affect actual memory usage?

So when mallocing arrays, you're supposed to check the computed size for overflow (or use calloc(3) or OpenBSD/libbsd's reallocarray(3) instead).

But casting the return value of malloc is incorrect, and that code should be using calloc.

If you malloc some structure and then painstakingly initialize every member, then calloc is wasteful.

And dynamically allocating function pointers on the heap (calloc) requires completely batshit insane keyboard manoeuvres.

And calloc, no matter how optimized it is, will still be more expensive than malloc which doesn't have to zero the memory.

I was under the impression that lots of implementations of malloc actually call calloc under the hood.

A related question is why do people use malloc if calloc is available?

In my experience using malloc over calloc make it much harder to find subtle bugs that result from off by one under set errors (i.e.

If you malloc some structure, and then forget to initialize some of the members, calloc will hide that bug by initializing them to all zero bits.

"Always use memset along with malloc, or always use calloc" That's a good way to defeat checkers like Valgrind.

The HN title doesn't match the article title "A Quick Tutorial on Implementing and Debugging Malloc, Free, Calloc, and Realloc" but from the article it is obviously C.