One major WTF in this code that stood out for me is the place where char zExtra is cast to const char * * . (Pointer-to-pointer casts should be alarming for any C programmer.) Only later, I realised that zExtra was a block of memory containing three arrays of different type. There should at least be a brief comment explaining the memory format of zExtra, and maybe one explaining why the code makes a single allocation instead of three separate allocations (is it performance critical?)
I'm not a purist by any means. I don't think comments are pure evil either. They have their uses but to say that code without comments is
Clean Code principles only state that code comments are not good _per se_. Most comments are just noise. Yet they are sometimes needed and bring value. It's not black and white.