[setpatchaddress]

Because you're going to have bugs. You don't need the extra performance, and you do need the extra safety. There is no good reason for you to do this in 2015, unless your system's malloc is broken. The exceptions to this rule know who they are.

[jeffreyrogers]

Yes, safety was the initial motivation. The advantage is that you free once and the semantics are more stack like. The performance is an additional benefit.

It is entirely possible to have no bugs in the <100 lines needed for this code, so I don't think the bug argument is valid. adrusi did raise a legitimate concern however.