Author: Julia Lawall <julia@diku.dk> Apparently, the NULL test is not necessary at this point. The semantic patch that finds this problem is as follows: (http://www.emn.fr/x-info/coccinelle/) // @@ type T; expression E; identifier i,fld; statement S; @@ – T i = E->fld; + T i; … when != E when != i if (E == NULL) …