Обсуждение: use the malloc macros in pg_dump.c

Hi.

I found that pg_dump.c has many pg_mallocs where the new object/array
macros could have been used, but currently they are not. I'm not sure
if this was a deliberate or accidental omission.

In case it was accidental, here is a patch to modify/simplify all that
allocation code.

PSA v1.

======
Kind Regards,
Peter Smith.
Fujitsu Australia

Hi Peter,

> I found that pg_dump.c has many pg_mallocs where the new object/array
> macros could have been used, but currently they are not. I'm not sure
> if this was a deliberate or accidental omission.
>
> In case it was accidental, here is a patch to modify/simplify all that
> allocation code.

Thanks for the patch. I reviewed / tested it and it looks OK. This
being said, I see many pieces of code left that still use pg_malloc /
pg_realloc in a similar fashion, including src/bin/pg_dump/* files.
Would you like to address those as well, or keep the scope only to
pg_dump.c?

-- 
Best regards,
Aleksander Alekseev

On Mon, Feb 2, 2026 at 11:38 PM Aleksander Alekseev
<aleksander@tigerdata.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Peter,
>
> > I found that pg_dump.c has many pg_mallocs where the new object/array
> > macros could have been used, but currently they are not. I'm not sure
> > if this was a deliberate or accidental omission.
> >
> > In case it was accidental, here is a patch to modify/simplify all that
> > allocation code.
>
> Thanks for the patch. I reviewed / tested it and it looks OK. This
> being said, I see many pieces of code left that still use pg_malloc /
> pg_realloc in a similar fashion, including src/bin/pg_dump/* files.
> Would you like to address those as well, or keep the scope only to
> pg_dump.c?
>

Hi Aleksander.

Thanks for your review!

At first I only changed only one file because I was unsure why these
changes were not already made, and whether others thought it was
worthwhile.

Now you have encouraged me that the patch makes sense, so I will
increase the scope to cover all the other pg_dump/* files. Will post
more later.

======
Kind Regards,
Peter Smith.
Fujitsu Australia

PSA v2 with more of the same kind of malloc changes.

Scope: This addresses all those I could find in the src/bin/pg_dump/* folder.

Note, there were a few examples of simple char * buffer mallocs I that
did not change, because it did not seem useful to do so.

======
Kind Regards,
Peter Smith.
Fujitsu Australia