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c difference between malloc and calloc
Please explain the significance of this statement,
Another difference between the malloc() and calloc() functions is that the memory allocated by malloc( ) function contains garbage values, while memory allocated by calloc( ) function contains all zeros.
Source ('C' Programming, Salim Y. Amdani)
Thanks
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Malloc() VS Calloc(): Explore the Difference between malloc() and calloc() malloc() and calloc() functions are used for dynamic memory allocation in the C programming language. The main difference between the malloc() and calloc() is that calloc() always requires two arguments and malloc() requires only one.
If you need the dynamically allocated memory to be zero-initialized then use calloc . If you don't need the dynamically allocated memory to be zero-initialized, then use malloc . You don't always need zero-initialized memory; if you don't need the memory zero-initialized, don't pay the cost of initializing it.
When you call malloc a second time, it has no way of knowing you are doing anything with newPtr . It merely allocates new space and returns a pointer to it. Then that new pointer is assigned to newPtr , which erases the old value that was in newPtr .
calloc() allocates the memory and also initializes the allocates memory to zero, while memory allocated using malloc() has random data. malloc() and memset() can be used to get the same effect as calloc(). calloc() takes two arguments, but malloc takes only 1 argument.
From http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_it_better_to_use_malloc_or_calloc_to_allocate_memory
malloc() is faster, since calloc() initializes the allocated memory to contain all zeros. Since you typically would want to use and initialize the memory yourself, this additional benefit of calloc() may not be necessary.
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