IMP interview questions C language Questions and answers - 9

Memory Allocation Strategy and c language Programs

1. Why doesn't this fragment work?
char *answer;
printf("Type something:\n");
gets(answer);
printf("You typed \"%s\"\n", answer);

A: The pointer variable answer, which is handed to gets() as the location into which the response should be stored, has not been set to point to any valid storage. That is, we cannot say where
the pointer answer points. (Since local variables are not initialized, and typically contain garbage, it is not even guaranteed that answer starts out as a null pointer.

The simplest way to correct the question-asking program is to use a local array, instead of a pointer, and let the compiler worry about allocation:

#include
#include

char answer[100], *p;
printf("Type something:\n");
fgets(answer, sizeof answer, stdin);
if((p = strchr(answer, '\n')) != NULL)
*p = '\0';
printf("You typed \"%s\"\n", answer);

This example also uses fgets() instead of gets(), so that the end of the array cannot be overwritten. Unfortunately for this example, fgets() does not automatically delete the trailing \n, as gets() would.) It would also be possible to use malloc() to allocate the answer buffer.

2. I can't get strcat() to work. I tried
char *s1 = "Hello, ";
char *s2 = "world!";
char *s3 = strcat(s1, s2);
but I got strange results.Why ?

A: As in question 1 above, the main problem here is that spacefor the concatenated result is not properly allocated. C does not provide an automatically-managed string type. C compilers only allocate memory for objects explicitly mentioned in the source code (in the case of strings, this includes character arrays and string literals). The programmer must arrange for sufficient space for the results of run-time operations such as string concatenation, typically by declaring arrays, or by
calling malloc().

strcat() performs no allocation; the second string is appended to the first one, in place. Therefore, one fix would be to declare the first string as an array:

char s1[20] = "Hello, ";

Since strcat() returns the value of its first argument (s1, in this case), the variable s3 is superfluous; after the call to strcat(), s1 contains the result.

The original call to strcat() in the question actually has two problems: the string literal pointed to by s1, besides not being big enough for any concatenated text, is not necessarily writable at all.

3. But the man page for strcat() says that it takes two char *'s as arguments. How am I supposed to know to allocate things?
A: In general, when using pointers you *always* have to consider memory allocation, if only to make sure that the compiler is doing it for you. If a library function's documentation does not explicitly mention allocation, it is usually the caller's problem.

The Synopsis section at the top of a Unix-style man page or in the ANSI C standard can be misleading. The code fragments presented there are closer to the function definitions used by
an implementor than the invocations used by the caller. In particular, many functions which accept pointers (e.g. to structures or strings) are usually called with a pointer to some object (a structure, or an array ) which the caller has allocated. Other common examples are time() and stat().

4. I just tried the code
char *p;
strcpy(p, "abc");
and it worked. How? Why didn't it crash?
A: You got lucky, I guess. The memory pointed to by the unitialized pointer p happened to be writable by you, and apparently was not already in use for anything vital.

5.How much memory does a pointer variable allocate?
A: That's a pretty misleading question. When you declare a pointer variable, as in

char *p;

you (or, more properly, the compiler) have allocated only enough memory to hold the pointer itself; that is, in this case you have allocated sizeof(char *) bytes of memory. But you have not yet allocated *any* memory for the pointer to point to.

6.I have a function that is supposed to return a string, but when it returns to its caller, the returned string is garbage.
A: Make sure that the pointed-to memory is properly allocated. For example, make sure you have *not* done something like

char *itoa(int n)
{
char retbuf[20]; /* WRONG */
sprintf(retbuf, "%d", n);
return retbuf; /* WRONG */
}

One fix (which is imperfect, especially if the function in question is called recursively, or if several of its return values are needed simultaneously) would be to declare the return buffer as

static char retbuf[20];

7. So what's the right way to return a string or other aggregate?
A: The returned pointer should be to a statically-allocated buffer, or to a buffer passed in by the caller, or to memory obtained with malloc(), but *not* to a local (automatic) array.

8. Why am I getting "warning: assignment of pointer from integer lacks a cast" for calls to malloc()?
A: Have you #include, or otherwise arranged for malloc() to be declared properly.

9. Why does some code carefully cast the values returned by malloc to the pointer type being allocated?
A: Before ANSI/ISO Standard C introduced the void * generic pointer type, these casts were typically required to silence warnings (and perhaps induce conversions) when assigning between incompatible pointer types.

Under ANSI/ISO Standard C, these casts are no longer necessary, and in fact modern practice discourages them, since they can camouflage important warnings which would otherwise be generated if malloc() happened not to be declared correctly; (However, the casts are typically seen in C code which for one reason or another is intended to be compatible with C++, where explicit casts from void * are required.)

10. I see code like
char *p = malloc(strlen(s) + 1);
strcpy(p, s);
Shouldn't that be malloc((strlen(s) + 1) * sizeof(char))?
A: It's never necessary to multiply by sizeof(char), since sizeof(char) is, by definition, exactly 1. (On the other hand, multiplying by sizeof(char) doesn't hurt, and in some circumstances may help by introducing a size_t into the expression.)

11. I've heard that some operating systems don't actually allocate memory until the program tries to use it. Is this legal?
A: It's hard to say. The Standard doesn't say that systems can act this way, but it doesn't explicitly say that they can't, either.

12. I'm allocating a large array for some numeric work, using the line
double *array = malloc(300 * 300 * sizeof(double));
malloc() isn't returning null, but the program is acting strangely, as if it's overwriting memory, or malloc() isn't allocating as much as I asked for, or something.
A: Notice that 300 x 300 is 90,000, which will not fit in a 16-bit int, even before you multiply it by sizeof(double). If you need to allocate this much memory, you'll have to be careful. If size_t (the type accepted by malloc()) is a 32-bit type on your machine, but int is 16 bits, you might be able to get away with writing 300 * (300 * sizeof(double)). Otherwise, you'll have to break your data structure up into smaller chunks, or use a 32-bit machine or compiler, or use some nonstandard memory allocation functions.

13.I've got 8 meg of memory in my PC. Why can I only seem to malloc 640K or so?
A: Under the segmented architecture of PC compatibles, it can be difficult to use more than 640K with any degree of transparency, especially under MS-DOS.

14. My program is crashing, apparently somewhere down inside malloc, but I can't see anything wrong with it. Is there a bug in malloc()?
A: It is unfortunately very easy to corrupt malloc's internal data structures, and the resulting problems can be stubborn. The most common source of problems is writing more to a malloc'ed
region than it was allocated to hold; a particularly common bug is to malloc(strlen(s)) instead of strlen(s) + 1. Other problems may involve using pointers to memory that has been freed, freeing pointers twice, freeing pointers not obtained from malloc, or trying to realloc a null pointer

15. You can't use dynamically-allocated memory after you free it, can you?
A: No. Some early documentation for malloc() stated that the contents of freed memory were "left undisturbed," but this ill- advised guarantee was never universal and is not required by the C Standard.

Few programmers would use the contents of freed memory deliberately, but it is easy to do so accidentally. Consider the following (correct) code for freeing a singly-linked list:

struct list *listp, *nextp;
for(listp = base; listp != NULL; listp = nextp) {
nextp = listp->next;
free(listp);
}

and notice what would happen if the more-obvious loop iteration expression listp = listp->next were used, without the temporary nextp pointer.

16. Why isn't a pointer null after calling free()? How unsafe is it to use (assign, compare) a pointer value after it's been freed?
A: When you call free(), the memory pointed to by the passed pointer is freed, but the value of the pointer in the caller probably remains unchanged, because C's pass-by-value semantics mean that called functions never permanently change the values of their arguments.

A pointer value which has been freed is, strictly speaking, invalid, and *any* use of it, even if is not dereferenced, can theoretically lead to trouble, though as a quality of implementation issue, most implementations will probably not go out of their way to generate exceptions for innocuous uses of
invalid pointers.

17.When I call malloc() to allocate memory for a pointer which is local to a function, do I have to explicitly free() it?
A: Yes. Remember that a pointer is different from what it points to. Local variables are deallocated when the function returns, but in the case of a pointer variable, this means that the pointer is deallocated, *not* what it points to. Memory allocated with malloc() always persists until you explicitly free it. In general, for every call to malloc(), there should be a corresponding call to free().

18. I'm allocating structures which contain pointers to other dynamically-allocated objects. When I free a structure, do I also have to free each subsidiary pointer?
A: Yes. In general, you must arrange that each pointer returned from malloc() be individually passed to free(), exactly once (if it is freed at all). A good rule of thumb is that for each call to malloc() in a program, you should be able to point at the call to free() which frees the memory allocated by that malloc() call.

19. Must I free allocated memory before the program exits?
A: You shouldn't have to. A real operating system definitively reclaims all memory and other resources when a program exits. Nevertheless, some personal computers are said not to reliably
recover memory, and all that can be inferred from the ANSI/ISO C Standard is that this is a "quality of implementation issue."

20. I have a program which mallocs and later frees a lot of memory, but I can see from the operating system that memory usage doesn't actually go back down.
A: Most implementations of malloc/free do not return freed memory to the operating system, but merely make it available for future malloc() calls within the same program.

21. How does free() know how many bytes to free?
A: The malloc/free implementation remembers the size of each block as it is allocated, so it is not necessary to remind it of the size when freeing.

22. So can I query the malloc package to find out how big an allocated block is?
A: Unfortunately, there is no standard or portable way.

23. Is it legal to pass a null pointer as the first argument to realloc()? Why would you want to?
A: ANSI C sanctions this usage (and the related realloc(..., 0), which frees), although several earlier implementations do not support it, so it may not be fully portable. Passing an initially-null pointer to realloc() can make it easier to write a self-starting incremental allocation algorithm.

24. What's the difference between calloc() and malloc()? Is it safe to take advantage of calloc's zero-filling? Does free() work on memory allocated with calloc(), or do you need a cfree()?
A: calloc(m, n) is essentially equivalent to

p = malloc(m * n);
memset(p, 0, m * n);

The zero fill is all-bits-zero, and does *not* therefore guarantee useful null pointer values (see section 5 of this list) or floating-point zero values. free() is properly used to free the memory allocated by calloc().

25. What is alloca() and why is its use discouraged?
A: alloca() allocates memory which is automatically freed when the function which called alloca() returns. That is, memory allocated with alloca is local to a particular function's "stack frame" or context.

alloca() cannot be written portably, and is difficult to implement on machines without a conventional stack. Its use is problematical (and the obvious implementation on a stack-based machine fails) when its return value is passed directly to another function, as in fgets(alloca(100), 100, stdin).

For these reasons, alloca() is not Standard and cannot be used in programs which must be widely portable, no matter how useful it might be.