Ignoring return values of library functions

suggest change

Almost every function in C standard library returns something on success, and something else on error. For example, malloc will return a pointer to the memory block allocated by the function on success, and, if the function failed to allocate the requested block of memory, a null pointer. So you should always check the return value for easier debugging.

This is bad:

char* x = malloc(100000000000UL * sizeof *x);
/* more code */
scanf("%s", x); /* This might invoke undefined behaviour and if lucky causes a segmentation violation, unless your system has a lot of memory */

This is good:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    char* x = malloc(100000000000UL * sizeof *x);
    if (x == NULL) {
        perror("malloc() failed");
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    if (scanf("%s", x) != 1) {
        fprintf(stderr, "could not read string\n");
        free(x);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    /* Do stuff with x. */

    /* Clean up. */
    free(x);

    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

This way you know right away the cause of error, otherwise you might spend hours looking for a bug in a completely wrong place.

Found a mistake? Have a question or improvement idea? Let me know.

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