Question

Calloc(), malloc(), and realloc() return pointer to memory stored where?

Answer 1

calloc(), malloc(), and realloc() are C functions that allocate memory in the heap section of a program's memory area and return a pointer to it. malloc() allocates memory without initializing, calloc() allocates and initializes the memory to zero, and realloc() resizes allocated memory.

Step-by-step explanation:

The functions calloc(), malloc(), and realloc() in C programming are used to allocate memory dynamically during runtime. These functions return a pointer to the memory that is allocated in the heap section of the program's memory area. The heap is a region of a process's memory which is used for dynamic memory allocation, where blocks of memory are allocated and freed in an arbitrary order.

The difference between these functions are:

• malloc() allocates a specified number of bytes of memory and returns a pointer to the first byte.
• calloc() also allocates memory, but it initializes all bytes to zero and takes two arguments: the number of elements and the size of each element.
• realloc() is used to resize already allocated memory without losing the data that is already stored in the memory.

When using these functions, it's important for programmers to manage memory correctly to avoid memory leaks or invalid memory access (dangling pointers).