Hi Guys, I need help with malloc() inside another function.

I'm passing a pointer and size to the function from my main() and I would like to allocate memory for that pointer dynamically using malloc() from inside that called function, but what I see is that.... the memory which is getting allocated is for the pointer declared withing my called function and not for the pointer which is inside the main().

How should I pass a pointer to a function and allocate memory for the passed pointer from inside the called function?

Can anyone throw light on this?

Help!!!

Vikram

I have written the following code and I get the output as shown below

SOURCE:

main()
{
   unsigned char *input_image;
   unsigned int bmp_image_size = 262144;

   if(alloc_pixels(input_image, bmp_image_size)==NULL)
     printf("\nPoint2: Memory allocated: %d bytes",_msize(input_image));
   else
     printf("\nPoint3: Memory not allocated");     

}

signed char alloc_pixels(unsigned char *ptr, unsigned int size)
{
    signed char status = NO_ERROR;
    ptr = NULL;

    ptr = (unsigned char*)malloc(size);

    if(ptr== NULL)
    {
        status = ERROR;
        free(ptr);
        printf("\nERROR: Memory allocation did not complete successfully!");
    }

    printf("\nPoint1: Memory allocated: %d bytes",_msize(ptr));

    return status;
}

PROGRAM OUTPUT:

Point1: Memory allocated ptr: 262144 bytes
Point2: Memory allocated input_image: 0 bytes