"Henry Hewgill" <23*1*7*8@s*u*e*t*u*a*e*u*a*> wrote: You are correct; it's the sort of thing I often do in my coding 'just in case', so it's not forgotten. It's termed defensive programming. Other examples include adding {...} around code blocks, even if they're only a single line, and the pairing free(pointer); pointer = NULL;