Notes on Malloc in C

Overview of Malloc

• Malloc is a powerful function in the C standard library.
• It allocates memory on the Heap as requested by the user.

Functionality of Malloc

• Malloc takes a number of bytes as input.
• It allocates the requested bytes on the Heap and returns a pointer to the allocated memory.

Type Consideration

• Malloc does not know the type of the pointer returned.
• In stricter languages like C++, you may need to cast the pointer appropriately.

Using Sizeof with Malloc

• It is often beneficial to use sizeof with malloc to ensure correct memory allocation.
• Example: To allocate memory for three integers:
  • Use the expression: malloc(sizeof(int) * 3)
  • This ensures the code is portable across different compilers.*

Error Handling

• If more memory is requested than is available, malloc will return NULL.

Good Practices

• Always free the allocated memory when done:
  • Use free(pointer) to release memory.
  • Assign the pointer to NULL after freeing it to avoid dangling pointers.

Additional Resources

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