Warning C26824

Postcondition for null pointer 'variable' requires it to be non-null (lifetime.1)

Remarks

Dereferencing a null pointer is a frequent problem in C and C++. We have several checks to deal with such problems. See this blog post for a comparison. When the analysis engine sees a null pointer returned from a function that has a contract forbidding such an operation, it will emit a C26824 warning. You can also enable C26825 for a stricter analysis. This check only works on functions annotated using SAL annotations.

Example

void postcondition_conditional(bool b, _When_(b == true, _Outptr_) int** p)  { 
    if (b == true) 
        *p = nullptr; // C26824 warning 
} 

To solve this warning, make sure there's no null pointer returned from the annotated function. Or, change the annotations to reflect the behavior of the function.