https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=121197
Bug ID: 121197
Summary: -Wcalloc-transposed-args warning is 100% useless
Product: gcc
Version: unknown
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Severity: normal
Priority: P3
Component: c
Assignee: unassigned at gcc dot gnu.org
Reporter: nfxjfg at googlemail dot com
Target Milestone: ---
Relatively recently, this warning got added to one of the default warnings.
I claim that it is 100% useless, doesn't fix a single bug, only causes a lot of
confusion, and should be disabled.
While on a formal level, the warning is correct, there is no difference in
semantics between calloc(a,b) and calloc(b,a). calloc(a,b) is 100% semantically
equivalent to calloc(a*b,1) or malloc(a*b)+memset() (minus the overflow check).
There is no magic that requires the first argument of calloc() to be actually
the number of array items if an array is allocated. (Probably) no analyzer
assigns special meaning to the order of the arguments.
