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How to deallocate memory without using free() in C?

Question: How to deallocate dynamically allocate memory without using “free()” function.  Solution: Standard library function realloc() can be used to deallocate previously allocated memory. Below is function declaration of “realloc()” from “stdlib.h” 




void *realloc(void *ptr, size_t size);

If “size” is zero, then call to realloc is equivalent to “free(ptr)”. And if “ptr” is NULL and size is non-zero then call to realloc is equivalent to “malloc(size)”. Let us check with simple example. 




/* code with memory leak */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
 
int main(void)
{
    int *ptr = (int*)malloc(10);
 
    return 0;
}

Check the leak summary with valgrind tool. It shows memory leak of 10 bytes, which is highlighted in red colour.

  [narendra@ubuntu]$ valgrind –leak-check=full ./free
  ==1238== LEAK SUMMARY:
  ==1238==    definitely lost: 10 bytes in 1 blocks.
  ==1238==      possibly lost: 0 bytes in 0 blocks.
  ==1238==    still reachable: 0 bytes in 0 blocks.
  ==1238==         suppressed: 0 bytes in 0 blocks.
[narendra@ubuntu]$

Let us modify the above code. 




#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
 
int main(void)
{
    int *ptr = (int*) malloc(10);
 
    /* we are calling realloc with size = 0 */
    realloc(ptr, 0);
    
 
    return 0;
}

Check the valgrind’s output. It shows no memory leaks are possible, highlighted in red color.

  [narendra@ubuntu]$ valgrind –leak-check=full ./a.out
  ==1435== ERROR SUMMARY: 0 errors from 0 contexts (suppressed: 11 from 1)
  ==1435== malloc/free: in use at exit: 0 bytes in 0 blocks.
  ==1435== malloc/free: 1 allocs, 1 frees, 10 bytes allocated.
  ==1435== For counts of detected errors, rerun with: -v
  ==1435== All heap blocks were freed — no leaks are possible.
  [narendra@ubuntu]$

This article is compiled by “Narendra Kangralkar“ and reviewed by GeeksforGeeks team.


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