Re: [Bug-gnulib] xvasprintf and xasprintf

[Bruno Haible]

Oskar Liljeblad wrote:
> I don't know if xvasprintf and xasprintf have been discussed before,
> but here's a module implementing them.

Hi Oskar,

A similar function exists in GNU gettext:

  /* Format a message and return the freshly allocated resulting string.  */
  extern char *xasprintf (const char *format, ...)
       __attribute__ ((__format__ (__printf__, 1, 2)));

Why do you prefer the function to return an 'int' and the caller to do
error checking against other failures? I find it quite handy to be able to
write

                    multiline_warning (xasprintf (_("%s%s: warning: "),
                                                  pos->file_name, buffer),
                                       xasprintf (...))

without lots of error checking at the caller site.

Small nits in the patch:
  lib/xvasprintf.c: should #include "vasprintf.h"
                    also put a space before opening parenthesis (GNU style)
  lib/xasprintf.c: #include <errno.h> is redundant.

Bruno