Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder3.hal-mli.net!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder1.hal-mli.net!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.earthlink.com!news.earthlink.com.POSTED!not-for-mail
NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:19:34 -0600
Message-ID: <4F3E7E1B.2205@mindspring.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:19:39 -0500
From: pete <pfiland@mindspring.com>
Reply-To: pfiland@mindspring.com
Organization: PF
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.04Gold (WinNT; I)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: malloc
References: <jhjr14$rjk$1@reader1.panix.com> <chine.bleu-CBABD5.13215116022012@news.eternal-september.org> <jhkaen$gvt$1@dont-email.me> <jhlb2q$qcu$1@dont-email.me> <jhltt7$k80$1@online.de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Lines: 21
X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: 4.154.223.113
X-Trace: sv3-Z9Tyq1Z5Roqz2TEOeTVpcRkW/YB0FGBCBFMGv5Y86Xmdc1Zg7aoyrNlPdYdURCvsCgHZ9Hf+COWp79t!PvEKUNaFIpn4llSStv42ZPNQgdGZpB3WLQwfvbCoOmZMWQlzGaalayi2uL4RIpah32GoYhmcHE+G!GlFfbWLI0IA=
X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers
X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly
X-Postfilter: 1.3.40
X-Original-Bytes: 1726
Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.c:17517

Joachim Schmitz wrote:
> 
> Noob wrote:
> > Eric Sosman wrote:
> >
> >>      The only allocator bug I have personally encountered was with
> >> a malloc() implementation that never, never returned NULL.  When it
> >> ought to have returned NULL, it crashed the program instead ...
> >
> > Visual Studio 6 used to crash on free(NULL).
> 
> Which seems OK, of malloc() never returns NULL.
> free() only needs to take what malloc() gives, doesn't it?

No. 
The standard says:
    void free(void *ptr);    
    If ptr is a null pointer, no action occurs.

-- 
pete