Description of problem: setlocale() will under certain contions call free(NULL). This is not exactly a bug in its own right, but it could indicate an unexpected state inside the routine, and having such calls floating around makes it harder to track down actual memory errors and leaks in a program. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): glibc-2.3.2-95.37 How reproducible: Every time Steps to Reproduce: 1. cc setlocale.c -ldmalloc -o setlocale 2. DMALLOC_OPTIONS=debug=0x2000000 ./setlocale (Assuming dmalloc is installed. setlocale.c will be attached to this report.) Actual results: 1141823485: 30: WARNING: tried to free(0) from 'ra=0xe9cdbf' 1141823485: 30: free: invalid pointer: from 'ra=0xe9cdbf' 1141823485: 30: ERROR: _chunk_free: pointer is null (err 20) 1141823485: 30: ending time = 1141823485, elapsed since start = 0:00:00 Expected results: [ No output ] Additional info: I'm testing under RHEL 3 right now, but I've also seen it on other releases and libc versions. Part of the problem is that various functions in Gtk and Glib contain setlocale() calls that trigger this problem.
Created attachment 125795 [details] Test program
Note that we've run extensive tests of the type indicated above, and this is the only instance of free(NULL) within the system libs encountered so far. This suggests to me that the developers have generally tried to avoid freeing NULL-pointers, which probably also means it was not done on purpose in this case.
I don't see how the tests could be extensive, there are hundreds of places in glibc alone where free can be called with NULL and in all cases it relies on the ISO C99 7.20.3.2 mandated behavior of free - if ptr is a null pointer, no action occurs.