Memory Allocation Functions
To
allocate storage dynamically, we'll need to call one of the three memory allocation
functions declared in the header.
malloc-->Allocates a block of memory but doesn't initialize it.
calloc-->Allocates a block of memory and clears it.
realloc-->Resizes a previously allocated block of memory.
Of the
three, malloc is the most used. It's more efficient than calloc, since it
doesn't have to clear the memory block that it allocates.
When we
call a memory allocation function to request a block of memory, the function
has no idea what type of data we're planning to store in the block, so it can't
return a pointer to an ordinary type such as int or char. Instead, the function
returns a value of type void *. A void * value is a "generic" pointer
essentially, just a memory address.
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