asprintf is nice to use, but the _documented_ error return convention is
unclear:
> If memory allocation wasn't possible, or some other error occurs,
> these functions will return -1, and the contents of strp are undefined.
What exactly "undefined" means is up for debate: if it was really
undefined, the caller wouldn't be able to meaningfully clean up, because
they wouldn't know if strp is a valid pointer. So far we interpreted
"undefined" — in some parts of the code base — as "either NULL or a
valid pointer that needs to be freed", and — in other parts of the
codebase — as "always NULL". I checked glibc and musl, and they both
uncoditionally set the output pointer to NULL on failure.
There is also no information _why_ asprintf failed. It could be an
allocation error or format string error. But we just don't have this
information.
Let's add a wrapper that either returns a good string or a NULL pointer.
Since there's just one failure result, we don't need a separate return
value and an output argument and can simplify callers.
52abc9fe96
