even if size_t was 32-bit already, the fact that the value was
unsigned and that gcc is too stupid to figure out it would be positive
as a signed quantity (due to the immediately-prior arithmetic and
conditionals) results in gcc compiling the integer-to-float conversion
as zero extension to 64 bits followed by an "fildll" (64 bit)
instruction rather than a simple "fildl" (32 bit) instruction on x86.
reportedly fildll is very slow on certain p4-class machines; even if
not, the new code is slightly smaller.
the bug appeared only with requests roughly 2*sizeof(size_t) to
4*sizeof(size_t) bytes smaller than a multiple of the page size, and
only for requests large enough to be serviced by mmap instead of the
normal heap. it was only ever observed on 64-bit machines but
presumably could also affect 32-bit (albeit with a smaller window of
opportunity).
if init_malloc returns positive (successful first init), malloc will
retry getting a chunk from the free bins rather than expanding the
heap again. also pass init_malloc a hint for the size of the initial
allocation.
this change is made with some reluctance, but i think it's for the
best. correct programs must handle either behavior, so there is little
advantage to having malloc(0) return NULL. and i managed to actually
make the malloc code slightly smaller with this change.
