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    If you're writing a function for an API where callers aren't supposed to understand the innards, this is one of those places where documentation is important. If you document that an argument must be a valid, non-NULL pointer, checking it becomes the caller's responsibility. Commented Feb 5, 2013 at 23:24
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    See also: stackoverflow.com/questions/4390007/… Commented Feb 6, 2013 at 1:10
  • With the hindsight of the year of 2017, keeping in mind the question and most answers were written in 2013, does any of the answers address the issue of time-travelling undefined behaviors due to optimizing compilers? Commented Jan 15, 2018 at 5:34
  • In the case of API calls expecting valid pointer arguments I wonder what is the value of testing for only NULL? Any invalid pointer that gets dereferenced would be just as bad as NULL and segfault all the same. Commented Jul 5, 2018 at 9:49