What is the difference between xmalloc and malloc?

Question

What is the difference between xmalloc() and malloc() for memory allocation?
Is there any pro of using xmalloc()?

Answer 1

As others have mentioned, it's true that xmalloc is very often implemented as a wrapper function that invokes the OS-supplied malloc and blindly calls abort or exit if it fails. However, many projects contain an xmalloc function that tries to save application state before exiting (see, for example, neovim).

Personally, I think of xmalloc as a kind of project-specific extended malloc rather than an exiting malloc. Though I don't recall ever seeing a version that didn't wind up calling abort or exit, some of them do a lot more than that.

So the answer to the question "What's the difference between xmalloc and malloc is: it depends. xmalloc is a non-standard, project-specific function, so it could do anything at all. The only way to know for sure is to read the code.