Comment by aw1621107

> but for "normal" program which function implementation malloc() will link against is not known during compilation. How can compiler go, like, "eh, I'll assume free(malloc(x)) is NOP and drop it" and not break most existing code?

I'd suspect that eliding suitable malloc/free pairs would not break most existing code because most existing code simply does not depend on malloc/free doing anything other than and/or beyond what the C standard requires.

How would you propose that eliding free(malloc(x)) would break "most" existing code, anyways?