2 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index a367d8d71..9993469fa 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -8,6 +8,9 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS                                    -*- outline -*-
   delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
   [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
 
+  wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
+  [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
+
 
 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
 
diff --git a/src/wc.c b/src/wc.c
index 3afd4deab..ccf4ccfbc 100644
--- a/src/wc.c
+++ b/src/wc.c
@@ -709,6 +709,9 @@ main (int argc, char **argv)
       ai = argv_iter_init_argv (files);
     }
 
+  if (!ai)
+    xalloc_die ();
+
   fstatus = get_input_fstatus (nfiles, files);
   number_width = compute_number_width (nfiles, fstatus);