Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized?

From	cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross)
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c
Subject	Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized?
Date	2026-05-16 12:44 +0000
Organization	PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC
Message-ID	<10u9orc$q3k$2@reader1.panix.com> (permalink)
References	<10u5a5v$nagc$1@dont-email.me> <10u83je$i07b$3@dont-email.me> <10u85bf$ij60$2@dont-email.me> <10u8742$j0nj$1@dont-email.me>

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In article <10u8742$j0nj$1@dont-email.me>,
Kalevi Kolttonen <kalevi@kolttonen.fi> wrote:
>Chris M. Thomasson <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Funny. I still have Solaris installed on an old hard drive. Last time I 
>> had to use it was over 20 years ago when I was working with the SPARC.
>
>We used to run Solaris on UltraSPARC servers to host email services
>like Sendmail and Cyrus IMAPD. They were good machines for the time
>when amd64 had not yet been invented. They were eventually replaced
>by amd64 hardware and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
>
>I guess SPARC CPUs are going to die with Solaris.

Ironically, SPARC was basically dead before Solaris.  Folks in
the Solaris kernel team argued strongly for Sun pivoting to
focus on x86; they saw the writing on the wall.  But Sun
leadership saw lots of margin dollars in SPARC on the high-end
and wasn't interested.

I remember vividly in 1996 or so talking to a sysadmin I knew.
They'd just gotten some nice-for-the-time IBM-branded Pentium
machines and he'd put Linux on them.  I said they were nice, but
not as nice as an UltraSPARC.  He replied, "true, an Ultra is
about twice as fast, but this is one quarter the cost."

It hit me in that moment that the proprietary RISC Unix
workstation market was doomed; PCs were getting better faster
than those machines were, and those companies all relied on high
margins to make a profit (read: their equipment was expensive).

Also, it was clear that Linux had a huge amount of momentum
behind it; Solaris _had_, arguably, been the most important
commercial Unix to that point, and it was still technically
superior, but Linux was catching up.  Quickly.  Being so closely
tied to a proprietary hardware platform wasn't great.

Eventually, Sun retreated from the workstation market (that had
made it successful) and pivoted to servers; the kiss of death
for a workstation company.

As for Solaris, by the time they convinced people to do
OpenSolaris, it was too little, too late: Linux was clearly on
the rise, people were investing in it, and there was little
advantage to shifting to a technology that was still mostly
owned by Sun.

Perhaps if Larry McVoy's "SourceWare" proposal in 1993 had
actually been implemented, the world would be a very different
place, but it wasn't.

	- Dan C.

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Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-14 20:09 +0000
  Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-14 21:10 +0000
    Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-14 23:35 +0000
      Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2026-05-14 17:46 -0700
        Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 02:00 +0000
          Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2026-05-14 19:22 -0700
            Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 11:02 +0000
              Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-15 14:44 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 21:50 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-15 14:55 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-15 15:02 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-05-15 22:12 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-16 11:38 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-05-16 13:00 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-16 13:58 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-16 12:34 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-16 16:25 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-16 12:32 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-17 11:10 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-19 14:03 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-05-17 06:36 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2026-05-20 00:41 -0400
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-05-20 07:11 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-20 09:49 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-20 15:38 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-16 12:25 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-17 11:12 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2026-05-17 02:26 -0700
                Leader Keith has spoken! (Was: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized?) gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2026-05-17 12:54 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-05-17 19:19 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-17 21:53 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-17 20:30 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-18 08:14 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-17 20:01 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-18 09:13 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-05-18 09:51 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-18 14:34 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-18 16:49 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-18 16:19 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 22:32 +0000
            Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-15 15:23 +0000
              Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-15 17:28 +0000
              Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 17:40 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-15 17:50 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 18:28 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-15 21:35 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-15 15:05 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-15 22:35 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-15 17:18 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-16 08:07 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-16 12:44 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-05-15 23:44 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-15 21:47 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-05-15 22:10 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-05-16 01:13 +0200
                AIX (was Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized?) cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 22:30 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-16 08:04 +0000
    Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-15 07:07 +0000
      Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-15 13:58 +0000
        Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-16 00:25 +0000
  Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2026-05-14 17:26 -0700
    Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 02:08 +0000
  Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2026-05-16 11:28 +0200

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