> In cgrep, parsing command-line options the old way is a breeding ground for CVEs and its bestiary. You have to remember to free the memory on every single exit path, difficult for the undisciplined.
No, no, no. Command line options that will exist the entire lifetime of the program are the quintessential case for not ever calling free() on them because it's a waste of time. There is absolutely no reason to spend processor cycles to carefully call free() on a bunch of individual resources when the program is about to exit and the OS will reclaim the entire process memory in one go much faster than your program can. You're creating complexity and making your program slower and there is literally no upside: this isn't a tradeoff, it's a bad practice.