Comment by saagarjha
3 hours ago
The problem is the code unconditionally dereferences the pointer, which would be UB if it was a null pointer. This means it is legal to optimize out any code paths that rely on this, even if they occur earlier in program order.
> The problem is the code unconditionally dereferences the pointer, which would be UB if it was a null pointer.
Only when NDEBUG is defined, right?
No, the code that does this is always active
Right so strictly speaking C++ could do anything here when passed a null pointer, because even though assert terminates the program, the C++ compiler cannot see that, and there is then undefined behaviour in that case