Patrick Steinhardt [off-list ref] writes:
quoted
Oops. I meant s/free(3p)/free(3)/
Ah. 3p is correct though and refers to the POSIX man pages.
If used in a context where you really care about posix specified
behaviour and are interferred by differences among generic C
library's free() implementations, free(3p) may be the right way to
spell it out concisely.
Everywhere else, like in this patch where you do not care about the
distinction, the extra 'p' is merely a noise, I would have to say.
If you are writing a wrapper that _depends_ on your platform free()
being strictly posix compliant, then you might write something like
#ifdef WE_HAVE_POSIX_FREE
#define safe_free(x) free(x)
#else
static void safe_free(void *x)
{
...
}
#endif
and your commit log message may say "We use free(3p) where
available, but otherwise emulate it via platform free() with some
safety knob".