If the external command failed to run, we could free up the allocated
*stdoutput and *stderror pointers, but then return those freed
pointers to the caller. The caller usually tries to print and free
*stderror, so this is a serious error.
Instead, return *stdoutput as NULL, and *stderror pointing to a
generic error message.
perror ("select");
quit:
- if (stdoutput) free (*stdoutput);
- if (stderror) free (*stderror);
+ if (stdoutput) {
+ free (*stdoutput);
+ *stdoutput = NULL;
+ }
+ if (stderror) {
+ free (*stderror);
+ /* Need to return non-NULL *stderror here since most callers
+ * will try to print and then free the err string.
+ * Unfortunately recovery from strdup failure here is not
+ * possible.
+ */
+ *stderror = strdup ("error running external command, "
+ "see debug output for details");
+ }
close (so_fd[0]);
close (se_fd[0]);
waitpid (pid, NULL, 0);