On 5/25/2012 11:25 AM, Ken Goldman wrote: > On 5/25/2012 11:03 AM, Steffen DETTMER wrote: >> >> I think crashing with NULL is quite good: a must-not-happen situation >> leads to a defined dead of SIGSEGVs, at least for platforms supporting >> that, typically with good aid for debuggin (like core files or halting >> debuggers providing a backtrace). Maybe adding an assert() before. > > That's not the normal library behavior. > > My typical design pattern is: > > void *ptr = NULL; > do stuff which may in some branches allocate the pointer > free(ptr); > > If the library crashes on free(NULL), you're just making people like me > do this everywhere: > > if (ptr != NULL) free (ptr);
Any secure programming standard would also require that you set ptr to NULL as soon as you free it. Re-using already freed memory pointers is a common source of both bugs and security holes. > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org > User Support Mailing List openssl-users@openssl.org > Automated List Manager majord...@openssl.org > . > ______________________________________________________________________ OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org User Support Mailing List openssl-users@openssl.org Automated List Manager majord...@openssl.org
