GCC automatically replaces printf("foo\n") with puts("foo") even with -O0. Clang does it too, albeit I have to enable optimizations: https://godbolt.org/z/drw4x

GCC automatically replaces printf("foo\n") with puts("foo") even with -O0. Clang does it too, albeit I have to enable optimizations: https://godbolt.org/z/drw4xP https://godbolt.org/z/drw4xP . As a result I never use puts for literal strings, this way if I want to add dynamic parameters later I don't have to change the function call. I'm pathologically lazy. Also as others point out typically the literal string will be in a ro segment so tampering with it won't be easy unless the code runs in a rather exotic environment.