I would venture that, if a few (essentially no-op) .so function calls are likely to affect performance to a point that you care, allocating and de-allocating he

I would venture that, if a few (essentially no-op) .so function calls are likely to affect performance to a point that you care, allocating and de-allocating heap memory under those same conditions might be a bit more of an issue. Depends on the detail of the use case of course, but assuming that NULL cleanup is more the exception than the rule this is definitely a case of profile it first for me.