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

In my opinion freeing the memory on crash isn't necessary. When your process terminates, OS will reclaim the memory, so all you have to do is exit.

On the other hand, other resources (e.g. open files) should be closed or at least flushed -- if not, they may not be stored/stored incomplete because of the buffering.