C Programming: malloc and free within a loop

Posted by kouei on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by kouei
Published on 2010-03-17T16:03:39Z Indexed on 2010/03/17 16:11 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 522

Filed under:

I just started out with C and have very little knowledge about performance issues with malloc() and free(). My question is as such: if I were to call malloc() followed by free() in a while-loop that loops for, say, 20 times, would it run slower compared to if I were to call free() outside the loop?

I am actually using the first method to allocate memory to a buffer, read a string of variable length in a file, perform some string operation, and then clear the buffer after every iteration. If my method results in a lot of overhead then I'd like to ask for a better way for me to achieve the same results.

Sorry for my bad English.

Thanks and regards, K

Related posts about malloc

Malloc corrupting already malloc'd memory in C

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm currently helping a friend debug a program of his, which includes linked lists. His list structure is pretty simple: typedef struct nodo{ int cantUnos; char* numBin; struct nodo* sig; }Nodo; We've got the following code snippet: void insNodo(Nodo** lista, char* auxBin, int auxCantUnos){ … >>> More
Multidimensional array with unequal second dimension size using malloc()

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello, I am playing around with multidimensional array of unequal second dimension size. Lets assume that I need the following data structure: [&ptr0]-[0][1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] [&ptr1]-[0][1][2] [&ptr2]-[0][1][2][3][4] int main() { int *a[3]; int *b; int i; a[0] = (int *)malloc(10… >>> More
Cannot understand how new or malloc does work with BYTE*

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I trying to allocate memory for 10 bytes BYTE* tmp; tmp = new BYTE[10]; //or tmp = (BYTE*)malloc(10*sizeof(BYTE)); But after new or malloc operation length of *tmp more than 10 (i.e. '\0' char not in 10 position in tmp array) Why? >>> More
C Programming: malloc and free within a loop

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi all, I just started out with C and have very little knowledge about performance issues with malloc() and free(). My question is as such: if I were to call malloc() followed by free() in a while-loop that loops for, say, 20 times, would it run slower compared to if I were to call free() outside… >>> More
Wrapping malloc - C

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am a beginner in C. While reading git's source code, I found this wrapper function around malloc. void *xmalloc(size_t size) { void *ret = malloc(size); if (!ret && !size) ret = malloc(1); if (!ret) { release_pack_memory(size, -1); ret = malloc(size); … >>> More

Developer IT