Second Rule of Memory Safety

Remember: the second rule of memory safety in C is to always clean up after yourself void *cleanup(void *ptr) { free(ptr); free(ptr); // extra clean return ptr; }

A C code snippet defines a cleanup function that frees the same pointer twice and then returns it. The joke is that “cleaning up after yourself” is taken too literally, causing a double-free memory error. EN: A C code snippet defines a cleanup function that frees the same pointer twice and then returns it. The joke is that “cleaning up after yourself” is taken too literally, causing a double-free memory error.

• @ithueti / 17836 2026-03-20