This is correct. What happens when you are trying to rely on malloc'd memory for sensitive calculations? Reading an invalid pointer is undefined behavior. I see no reason why "it almost never works" to check for NULL and abort if necessary.

> Checking the return of malloc() for NULL is not currently considered good practice

This is simply false. I was a TA for the intro C class at CMU last year, and we still teach to check for NULL. In fact, we mark down students who do not do so.