Differences between malloc() and calloc()

Thursday, 01 September 2011 16:07 -

Allocation of memory at the time of execution is called dynamic memory allocation. It is done using the standard

library functions malloc() and calloc(). It is defined in "stdlib.h".

malloc(): used to allocate required number of bytes in memory at runtime. It takes one argument, viz. size in

bytes to be allocated.

Syntax:

void * malloc(size_t size);

Example:

a = (int*) malloc(4);

4 is the size (in bytes) of memory to be allocated.

calloc(): used to allocate required number of bytes in memory at runtime. It needs two arguments

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Differences between malloc() and calloc()

Thursday, 01 September 2011 16:07 -

z.,

1. total number of data and

2. size of each data.

Syntax:

void * calloc(size_t nmemb, size_t size);

Example:

a = (int*) calloc(8, sizeof(int));

Here sizeof indicates the size of the data type and 8 indicates that we want to reserve space for storing 8

integers.

Difference is.

1. Number of arguments differ.

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Differences between malloc() and calloc()

Thursday, 01 September 2011 16:07 -

2. By default, memory allocated by malloc() contains garbage values. Whereas memory allocated by calloc() contains all zeros.

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