Should I free allocated memory on abnormal termination?

Question

My program (a text-mode web browser) is dynamically allocating memory.

I do free unneeded blocks during runtime, of course. And I do free everything before normal te

Answer 1

You don't need to reclaim memory on normal termination except to obviate false positives in leak detecting tools.

If your program terminates abnormally, depending on the cause, you may find that you can't free memory. For instance, a SIGSEGV resulting from a corrupted heap means that even trying to free other stuff on the heap maybe a hopeless exercise.