I'm supporting some c code on Solaris, and I've seen something weird at least I think it is: char new_login[64]; ... strcpy(new_login, (char *)login); ... free(new_login); My understanding is that since the variable is a local array the memory comes from the stack and does not need to be freed, and moreover since no malloc/calloc/realloc was used the behaviour is undefined. This is a real-time system so I think it is a waste of cycles. Am I missing something obvious?