r/ProgrammerHumor • u/ClipboardCopyPaste • 2d ago

Meme bugIntroducedDebugging

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1.1k Upvotes

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u/atanasius 2d ago

A null pointer is still valid to assign to a variable.

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u/SeriousPlankton2000 2d ago

Also it's valid to call free(NULL)

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u/meat-eating-orchid 2d ago

has it always been valid? I could have sworn that freeing a nullpointer was only valid in C++ but not in C. I couldn't find anything on cppreference on when this was introduced or if it has always been like this

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u/GoddammitDontShootMe 2d ago

Very certain you could always free(NULL); in C. In fact, it's good practice to set pointers to NULL after freeing them to avoid issues like double-free.