[win311fwg]

Why 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.

[mort96]

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?

[win311fwg]

> The example allocates an SDL_Surface large enough to fit the text string each iteration.

Impossible without knowing how much to allocate, which you indicate would require adding a bunch of complexity. However, I am willing to chalk that up to being a typo. Given that we are now calculating how much to allocate on each iteration, where is the meaningful complexity? I see almost no difference between:

    while (next()) {
        size_t size = measure_text(t);
        void *p = malloc(size);
        draw_text(p, t);
        free(p);
    }

and

    void *p = NULL;
    while (next()) {
        size_t size = measure_text(t);
        void *p = galloc(p, size);
        draw_text(p, t);
    }
    free(p);

[krapp]

I think I've been successfully nerd sniped.

It might be preferable to create a font atlas and just allocate printable ASCII characters as a spritesheet (a single SDL_Texture* reference and an array of rects.) Rather than allocating a texture for each string, you just iterate the string and blit the characters, no new allocations necessary.

If you need something more complex, with kerning and the like, the current version of SDL_TTF can create font atlases for various backends.