[Someone]

I stand corrected. Initially, I thought that, even if it calloc can’t, an OS could provide a different way to obtain a pointer to a memory region that’s larger than SIZE_MAX.

However, the standard says (https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/types/size_t):

“size_t can store the maximum size of a theoretically possible object of any type (including array).”

and (https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/language/pointer):

“Pointer is a type of an object that refers to a function or an object of another type, possibly adding qualifiers. Pointer may also refer to nothing, which is indicated by the special null pointer value.”

⇒ pointers must either be null or point to an object, and objects aren’t larger than SIZE_MAX, so I think having a pointer pointing to a block larger than SIZE_MAX violates the standard.

[jstimpfle]

> pointer pointing to a block larger than SIZE_MAX violates the standard.

it's simply not possible, by definition.