> Never mind that this will push complexity into the caller (or just flat-out add complexity in some cases). Complexity which will necessarily add more opportun

> Never mind that this will push complexity into the caller (or just flat-out add complexity in some cases). Complexity which will necessarily add more opportunities for bugs. I don't follow how this could happen. Is there any other case where printf printing "(null)" for NULL %s values would be useful besides when debugging? If i am debugging then yes, making printf print "(null)" can be useful. But if instead of that it would segfault, the added complexity of doing an explicit check as in printf("%s", str ? str : "(null)") will not "add more opportunities for bugs", because that code won't live past the debugging session. On the other hand, if i'm not debugging, passing a NULL %s value to printf is almost certainly a bug, and i'd much rather have printf segfaulting in the presence of that bug than it silently ignoring it and printing some flag value.