C++: Promote cpp/guarded-free out of experimental

[jketema]

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[github-actions]

QHelp previews:

cpp/ql/src/Best Practices/GuardedFree.qhelp

Guarded Free

The free function, which deallocates heap memory, may accept a NULL pointer and take no action. Therefore, it is unnecessary to check its argument for the value of NULL before a function call to free. As such, these guards may hinder performance and readability.

Recommendation

A function call to free should not depend upon the value of its argument. Delete the condition preceding a function call to free when its only purpose is to check the value of the pointer to be freed.

Example

void test()
{
    char *foo = malloc(100);

    // BAD
    if (foo)          
        free(foo);

    // GOOD
    free(foo);
}

In this example the condition checking the value of foo can be deleted.

References

• The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition: free - free allocated memory

[geoffw0]

Changes LGTM. A sample of the new DCA results LGTM.

We could replace FreeCall with DeallocationExpr and fc.getArgument(0) with fc.getFreedExpr(), to add results for all kinds of free variants including, I think, delete. This is assuming we're confident all of these variants are in fact safe on NULL. It probably makes sense to promote the query as it is and consider this as a follow-up step afterwards?

Needs a docs review.

[jketema]

It probably makes sense to promote the query as it is and consider this as a follow-up step afterwards?

That would have my preference.