What does the first "c" stand for in "calloc"?

Question

A student asked the question and I didn't know for sure.

Guesses include: "counted", "clearing", "chunked", "complete", ...

The standard library documentation doesn't say what it stands for and there aren't similarly named functions that would indicate a pattern. Does anyone know the actual etymology and perhaps have an authoritative reference to back it up?

Answer 1

According to an excerpt from the book Linux System Programming (by Robert Love), no official sources exist on the etymology of calloc.

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Some plausible candidates seem to be:

1. Count or counted, because calloc takes a separate count argument.

2. Clear, because it ensures that the returned memory chunk has been cleared.

   • Brian Kernighan is reported to believe that the "c" stands for clear (although he has admitted he's not sure).
   • (See comments.) An early calloc.c seems to contain an explicit reference to the word clear in a source code comment (but no reference to the word count or to any other candidate). In another source code comment in the file malloc.c, the word clear appears again, in reference to the word calloc.

3. C, as in the C language.

   • (See alk's answer and comments.) Possibly a naming convention for a set of functions that were introduced at about the same time.

Answer 2

I did some research and found the following in "UNIX@ TIME-SHARING SYSTEM: UNIX PROGRAMMER'S MANUAL. Seventh Edition, Volume 2", chapter "PROGRAMMING" (Italics by me):

char *malloc(num); 

allocates num bytes. The pointer returned is sufficiently well aligned to be usable for any purpose. NULL is returned if no space is available.

char *calloc(num, size); 

allocates space for num items each of size size. The space is guaranteed to be set to 0 and the pointer is sufficiently well aligned to be usable for any purpose. NULL is returned if no space is available.

 cfree(ptr) char *ptr; 

Space is returned to the pool used by calloc. Disorder can be expected if the pointer was not obtained from calloc.

• The last sentence is a clear evidence that calloc() was definitely (meant to be?) more different from malloc() then just by clearing out the memory.

  ^{Interesting enough there is no reference to free() on any of those some hundred pages ... :-)}

• Moreover UNIX V6 already had calloc() which calls alloc(). The (linked) source does not show any approach to zero out any memory.

Concluding from the both facts above I strongly object the theory that the leading "c" in calloc() stands for "clear".