From: Charles Mills <cmills@...>
Date: 2005-07-26T13:01:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby extensions on 64 bit linux

Joe Van Dyk wrote:
> On 7/25/05, Daniel Brockman <daniel@brockman.se> wrote:
> > Daniel,
> >
> > What do you mean by "never cast malloc"?
>
> Yeah, I had no idea what he was talking about, but didn't want to look
> stupid. :(

Because it masks failed inclusion of <stdlib.h>.  (If stdlib is not
included then the prototype for malloc is not defined causing malloc to
return an int and you run into the problem discussed earlier.)  Also it
is not necessary in ANSI C:
http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/q7.7.html

This is not really a problem with Ruby extensions though since Ruby
defines its own mem allocation functions / macros.

-Charlie