alt Hacker NewsWhy does the buffer need to be resized? Your malloc version allocates a fixed amount of memory on each iteration. You can allocate the same amount of memory ahead of time.
If you were dynamically changing the malloc allocation size on each iteration then you have a case for a growable buffer to do the same, but in that case you would already have all the complexity of which you speak as required to support a dynamically-sized malloc.
The example allocates an SDL_Surface large enough to fit the text string each iteration.
Granted, you could do a pre-pass to find the largest string and allocate enough memory for that once, then use that buffer throughout the loop.
But again, what do you gain from that complexity?