'strcpy' with 'malloc'?

Question

Is it safe to do something like the following?

#include <stdio.h>
#include <malloc.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(void)
{
    char* msg;

    strcpy(msg, "Hello World!!!");  //<---------

    printf("%s\n", msg);

    return 0;
}

Or should the following be used?

char* msg = (char*)malloc(sizeof(char) * 15);

Answer 1

strdup does the malloc and strcpy for you

char *msg = strdup("hello world");

Answer 2

Your original code does not assign msg. Attempting to strcpy to it would be bad. You need to allocate some space before you strcpy into it. You could use malloc as you suggest or allocate space on the stack like this:

char msg[15];

If you malloc the memory you should remember to free it at some point. If you allocate on the stack the memory will be automatically returned to the stack when it goes out of scope (e.g. the function exits). In both cases you need to be careful to allocate enough to be able to copy the longest string into it. You might want to take a look at strncpy to avoid overflowing the array.

Answer 3

The first version is not safe. And, msg should be pointing to valid memory location for "Hello World!!!" to get copied.

char* msg = (char*)malloc(sizeof(char) * 15);
strcpy(msg, "Hello World!!!");