Common Errors
The improper use of dynamic memory allocation can frequently be a source of bugs.
Most common errors are as follows:
- Not checking for allocation failures. Memory allocation is not guaranteed to succeed. If there's no check for successful allocation implemented, this usually leads to a crash of the program or the entire system.
- Memory leaks. Failure to deallocate memory using
freeleads to buildup of memory that is non-reusable memory, which is no longer used by the program. This wastes memory resources and can lead to allocation failures when these resources are exhausted. - Logical errors. All allocations must follow the same pattern: allocation using
malloc, usage to store data, deallocation usingfree. Failures to adhere to this pattern, such as memory usage after a call tofreeor before a call tomalloc, callingfreetwice ("double free"), etc., usually leads to a crash of the program.
Read more about this topic: C Dynamic Memory Allocation
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