Malloc, meaning Memory Allocation

• What does malloc returns
• Typecast the returned void pointer of malloc
• Explanation about how free() works

malloc()

• returns the address of the empty spaced memory.
• Specifically, returns a void pointer pointing to the first byte of the allocated memory.
• returns NULL when there's no longer empty spaced memory.

Malloc doesn't have an idea of what it is pointing to nor the data type it's gonna store it to. Therefore it's important to assign a data type by typecasting it. We can write (int *) in front of malloc()

person *myperson = (person *) malloc(sizeof(person));
// person here is name of the struct
Copy

sizeof values in each data type of C
malloc(sizeof(int))
Basically sizeof(int) is saying I have 1 int. Since I want three integers, give me three pieces of int -> 3 * sizeof(int). (1)

Freeing a memory in C and how it works

C - Freeing a linked list

1. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/72751174/why-is-sizeof-used-in-the-argument-to-malloc