From e57d6e024cd4e56fdfaf5d297c79740daf7fdde3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: obligaron <obligaron@live.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 21:18:17 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] [c] Optimise error handling for empty datatable rows

---
 CHANGELOG.md         |  1 +
 c/src/gherkin_line.c | 13 +++++++++----
 2 files changed, 10 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index d739a358b..cc9fcdfa5 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -17,6 +17,7 @@ This document is formatted according to the principles of [Keep A CHANGELOG](htt
 - [.NET] Improved parsing time
 - [.NET] Use string-ordinal comparison consistently and remove old Mono workaround
 - [.NET] Improved startup time
+- [c] Optimise error handling for empty datatable rows
 
 ### Changed
 - [cpp] add generic support for ABI versioning with VERSION ([#328](https://github.com/cucumber/gherkin/pull/328))
diff --git a/c/src/gherkin_line.c b/c/src/gherkin_line.c
index c47f6c0fb..fb2bebc05 100644
--- a/c/src/gherkin_line.c
+++ b/c/src/gherkin_line.c
@@ -76,17 +76,22 @@ wchar_t* GherkinLine_copy_line_text(const GherkinLine* line, int indent_to_remov
 
 const Items* GherkinLine_table_cells(const GherkinLine* line) {
     int item_count = calculate_cell_count(line->trimmed_line);
-    if (item_count == 0)
-        return (Items*)0;
+    Items* item_array = (Items*)malloc(sizeof(Items));
+    item_array->count = item_count;
+
+    if (item_count == 0) {
+        item_array->items = 0;
+        return item_array;
+    }
+
     Span* items = (Span*)malloc(item_count * sizeof(Span));
     int i;
     for (i = 0; i < item_count; ++i) {
         items[i].column = 0;
         items[i].text = 0;
     }
-    Items* item_array = (Items*)malloc(sizeof(Items));
-    item_array->count = item_count;
     item_array->items = items;
+
     const wchar_t* current_pos = line->trimmed_line;
     for (i = 0; i < item_count; ++i) {
         current_pos = populate_cell_data(&items[i], current_pos, current_pos - line->line_text);