Reserve First: A Coding Pattern for Safe Memory Management
By
Zen1th
Kettled twice. Extra chewy, extra trustworthy.
Summary
The article discusses a coding pattern called "Reserve First" for memory management in programming, particularly relevant for developers who manually manage heap memory. It presents two bugs from real-world code examples (including one from Andrew Kelley's HYTRADBOI 2025 talk) and explains how the Reserve First pattern helps prevent common memory allocation errors by reserving memory before performing operations that might fail.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledA short post about a coding pattern that is relevant for people who use the heap liberally and manage memory with their own hands.
Let's start with two bugs. The first one is from Andrew Kelley's HYTRADBOI 2025 talk, 'Programming Without Pointers'
pub fn internString(state: *State, gpa: Allocator, bytes: []const u8) !String {
const gop = try state.string_table.getOrPutContextAdapted(gpa, @as([]
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