1. "The algorithm" is the same in all cases here: a linear scan with a look-behind of 1. We're just talking about how the algorithm gets translated into code.

2. My point wasn't about the `for` loop: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12798192

3. Yes, I don't do any error handling and neither does Linus. I wasn't trying to bring up the importance of error handling. I was trying to bring up the importance of avoiding undefined behavior. "Segfault" was shorthand for that. Dereferencing NULL is undefined behavior. I mostly don't care about "taste", but showing undefined behavior while talking about taste seems egregious.

4. Finally, I don't get nearly as hung up about "duplication" as most programmers: http://www.sandimetz.com/blog/2016/1/20/the-wrong-abstractio.... I realize this is still a minority opinion, but we own the future. (This comment has a bunch of duplicated 'e's, but we both agree that that's unimportant to "DRY" out. Your concerns strike me as similar. When you try to minimize the number of occurrences of "x != NULL" you're doing Hamming compression, not programming.)