freeing memory issue

Question

Hi All,

I have an issue regarding freeing memory as under:

            string points; // some points sequences

    char* charPoints = (char*)malloc((points.length() +1) * sizeof(char));

            //do something

    free(charPoints);

Even then after freeing memory is leaked when checked with instruments

Answer 1

The only problem I see is when malloc returns NULL because it can't allocate enough contiguous memory. Are you sure that the memory leak is due to the malloc/free?

Answer 2

Your instruments for leak detection are bad.

Answer 3

The pointer you pass to free must be the same one which returned by malloc. If you pass a different pointer it will result in a undefined behavior. Take a copy of the pointer before you do the operation such as incrementing the charPoints and then pass this original pointer to free function to properly release memory.

Answer 4

After freeing the memory update with NULL value shown bellow

free(charPoints); charPoints ="NULL"