found redundant code in file natSystemProperties.cc

Wed Jul 29 18:25:00 GMT 2009

Martin Ettl wrote:
> Hello friends,
>> i have checked the sources of gcc-4.4.1 with the static code analysis tool cppcheck. It brought up an issue in file gcc-4.4.1/libjava/gnu/classpath/natSystemProperties.cc at line 278. Lets take a look at the sourcecode:

> 278 if (buffer != NULL)
> free (buffer);
> ....
>> Here the line 278 is redundant, because it is safe to deallocate a NULL-Pointer! In other words, the if-statement can be removed.

Well yes, but it saves a library call.
Harbison and Steele note "If the argument to free is a null pointer
then no action should occur, but this has been known to cause trouble
in some C implementations." This is probably just ancient history,
though.
Andrew.