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From: Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: So You Think You Can Const?
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2025 10:56:04 -0800
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David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
[...]
> If you want a better signature for "free", then I would suggest "void
> free(void ** p)" - that (to me) more naturally shows that the function
> is freeing the pointer, while also greatly reducing the "use after
> free" errors in C code by turning them into "dereferencing a null
> pointer" errors which are more easily caught by many OS's.

I'm not sure that would work.  A void** argument means you need to pass
a pointer to a void* object.  If you've assigned the converted result of
malloc() to, say, an int* object, you don't have a void* object.  (int*
and void* might not even have the same representation).

Some kind of generic function that takes a pointer to an object of any
object pointer type could work, but the language doesn't support that.
(C++ addressed this by making `new` and `delete` built-in operators
rather than library functions.)

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */