effect of free()

[Dolf Grunbauer]

In article <248 at seti.inria.fr> jourdan at minos.inria.fr (Martin Jourdan) writes:
->In article <16022 at vail.ICO.ISC.COM> rcd at ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) writes:
->>bill at twwells.com (T. William Wells) writes:
->>> ...For example, the following code fragment is nonportable:
->>> 	char    *ptr;
->>> 	ptr = malloc(1);
->>> 	free(ptr);
->>> 	if (ptr == 0) ...
->>> The if might cause a trap when the value of ptr is accessed.
->>Not true.  The "if" only examines the value of the pointer, not what it
->>points to.
->You're wrong, Dick.  Someone else already pointed it out, but let me
->make it clear again.  Imagine a segmented memory architecture with
->protections, and imagine that the call to "free" above frees the last
->used block in the segment and that "free" is clever enough to
->determine it and decides to release the segment to the OS, thus making
->the whole segment invalid [...]
-> [...].  Then merely loading the value of "ptr" in a register to test it
->against 0 will cause a invalid-address trap.

I agree with Dick, as the original statement is:
   if (ptr == 0) ...
I think Martin explained why the statement:
   if (*ptr == 0) ...
is unacceptable and how the OS could trigger this illegal use.
Is this true or am I missing Martin's point ?
-- 
Dolf Grunbauer          Tel: +31 55 432764  Internet dolf at idca.tds.philips.nl
Philips Telecommunication and Data Systems  UUCP ....!mcvax!philapd!dolf
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