Dynamically allocate and free memory in local functions

Question

Consider the following function:

void free_or_not ( int count ) {
    int i ;
    int *ip = malloc ( count * sizeof ( int ) ) ;

    for ( i = 0 ; i < count ; i ++ )
        ip[i] = i ;

    for ( i = 0 ; i < count ; i ++ )
        printf ( "%d\n" , ip[i] ) ;

    free ( ip ) ;
}

Will this cause memory leak if I don't call free() inside free_or_not()?

Answer 1

Will this cause memory leak if I don't call free() inside free_or_not()?

Yes, it will cause memory leak. Once your function finishes execution, you don't have any pointers to the allocated memory to free() it.

Solution: If you change the return type of your function to void * (or similar) and return the allocated pointer (ip)from the function, then, you can collect that pointer tn the caller and free() the pointer from the caller of this function.