From 3c8f9c92473fde2a6918b1b005f39f536c26feb4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Daniel Stenberg <daniel@haxx.se>
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2026 11:54:18 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] setopt: free the previous STRING_ENCODING before storing the
 new

Follow-up to 6b9c75e219cdcfd3e17e7858

Fixes #20179
Reported-by: correctmost on github
Closes #20180
---
 lib/setopt.c | 4 +++-
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/lib/setopt.c b/lib/setopt.c
index 06e7dd1b86..0c1da5bc12 100644
--- a/lib/setopt.c
+++ b/lib/setopt.c
@@ -1725,8 +1725,10 @@ static CURLcode setopt_cptr(struct Curl_easy *data, CURLoption option,
      */
     if(ptr && !*ptr) {
       ptr = Curl_get_content_encodings();
-      if(ptr)
+      if(ptr) {
+        curlx_free(s->str[STRING_ENCODING]);
         s->str[STRING_ENCODING] = ptr;
+      }
       else
         result = CURLE_OUT_OF_MEMORY;
       return result;