[ARROW-4150] [C++] Do not return buffers containing nullptr from internal allocations

• Type: Wish
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 0.11.1
• Fix Version/s: 0.12.0
• Component/s: C++
• Labels: pull-request-available
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/20736
• Assignee: Antoine Pitrou
• Reporter: Antoine Pitrou
• Created: 03/Jan/19 15:33
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 07:32
• Resolved: 04/Jan/19 17:40

Description

When a 0-byte buffer is allocated, or at the start of a BufferBuilder, the buffer's data pointer can be null. This leads to passing null arguments (with zero sizes) to standard functions such as memset() and memcpy() in many places. UBSAN doesn't like it.

Since a null pointer often means "failed allocating" or "programmer error", we might want to use a non-null pointer to a static empty piece of data instead.

Issue Links

• links to: GitHub Pull Request #3309