GNU bug report logs - #13530
head: memory exhausted when printing all from stdin but last P/E bytes

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From: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>
To: Bernhard Voelker <mail <at> bernhard-voelker.de>
Cc: Lei Zhang <lei.zhang <at> uwaterloo.ca>, 13530 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#13530: head: memory exhausted when printing all from stdin but last P/E bytes
Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:27:15 +0000

On 01/23/2013 01:21 PM, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
> On 01/23/2013 02:03 PM, Pádraig Brady wrote:
>> On 01/23/2013 12:53 PM, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
>>> head doesn't "allocate everything up front" - instead, it only
>>> allocates the pointer array which would hold the actual data.
>>
>> Sure. I was wondering whether that should change
>> to allocate everything up front so as to exit early.
>
> I think that's not a good idea because head would ENOMEM
> even if it doesn't wouldn't need the memory (depending on the
> input). Why should the following fail?
>
>    $ echo 123 | head -c -T
>
> I think there's no reason to fail until we really know it would
> fail. In this case, we can only know it when we actually come
> to the point when we need the memory.
>
> It doesn't matter if we have
>    $ echo 123 | head -c -10
> or
>    $ echo 123 | head -c -P

Yes my point is that the above could be a problem at:

today    | head -c -P # This noop is OK
tomorrow | head -c -P # If we actually send lots of data we fail

cheers,
Pádraig.

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