Re:Help, Linux ate my RAM
by aliguori on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @04:26PM
(#3700248)
Most software cannot cope with malloc failing. A little swapping is at least recoverable. A failed malloc almost guarantees that your application will crash--sometimes in a very unpleasant way.
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ime the main alternative is the box crashing, frequently without leaving behind enough information to know what went wrong. at least if the app crashes you have a pretty good idea who was incompetent.