doc/man3/OPENSSL_malloc: clarify OPENSSL_clear_free() w/ NULL

It wasn't explicitly clear that it was safe to call OPENSSL_clear_free()
with a NULL because, as worded, it sounded like it may call
OPENSSL_cleanse() on NULL before calling OPENSSL_free().

CLA: trivial

Signed-off-by: dann frazier <dann.frazier@chainguard.dev>
Reviewed-by: Saša Nedvědický <sashan@openssl.org>
Reviewed-by: Eugene Syromiatnikov <esyr@openssl.org>
Reviewed-by: Paul Dale <paul.dale@oracle.com>
Reviewed-by: Neil Horman <nhorman@openssl.org>
MergeDate: Thu Mar 12 17:43:51 2026
(Merged from https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/28127)

(cherry picked from commit 4adb40393c073fd5ac34495efd083e981a6a6d69)

diff --git a/doc/man3/OPENSSL_malloc.pod b/doc/man3/OPENSSL_malloc.pod
index 30ceeb6ec0389830b2182ffb3526e4ae29ec2e64..8de534b94d605269fad5208844b2b7172fdebffc 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/man3/OPENSSL_malloc.pod
+++ b/doc/man3/OPENSSL_malloc.pod
@@ -138,8 +138,8 @@ in the I<freeptr> variable, rather than the returned pointer.
 OPENSSL_clear_realloc() and OPENSSL_clear_free() should be used
 when the buffer at B<addr> holds sensitive information.
 The old buffer is filled with zero's by calling OPENSSL_cleanse()
-before ultimately calling OPENSSL_free(). If the argument to OPENSSL_free() is
-NULL, nothing is done.
+before ultimately calling OPENSSL_free(). If the argument to
+OPENSSL_clear_free() is NULL, nothing is done.
 
 OPENSSL_malloc_array(), OPENSSL_calloc(), OPENSSL_aligned_alloc_array(),
 OPENSSL_realloc_array(), and OPENSSL_clear_realloc_array() are variants