Is it safe to use realloc?

by

It’s perfectly safe to use realloc. It is the way to reallocate memory in a C program.

However you should always check the return value for an error condition. Don’t fall into this common trap:

p = realloc(p, new_size); // don't do this!

If this fails, realloc returns NULL and you have lost access to p. Instead do this:

new_p = realloc(p, new_size);
if (new_p == NULL)
    ...handle error
p = new_p;

More Related Contents:

  1. Create a wrapper function for malloc and free in C
  2. Proper usage of realloc()
  3. Using realloc to shrink the allocated memory
  4. C: Correctly freeing memory of a multi-dimensional array
  5. How do realloc and memcpy work?
  6. Avoid memory leaks in C++ Pointers [closed]
  7. Memory leak in Data Access layer using enterprise library
  8. Dynamic allocation of an unknown matrix in C
  9. What does this GCC error “… relocation truncated to fit…” mean?
  10. Returning a pointer to an automatic variable
  11. What does malloc(0) return? [duplicate]
  12. .NET Memory issues loading ~40 images, memory not reclaimed, potentially due to LOH fragmentation
  13. What does the brk() system call do?
  14. What happens when a variable goes out of scope?
  15. Explain this implementation of malloc from the K&R book
  16. Kernel zeroes memory?
  17. Why would you ever want to allocate memory on the heap rather than the stack? [duplicate]
  18. memory alignment within gcc structs
  19. Why is there no reallocation functionality in C++ allocators?
  20. Why do I get different results when I dereference a pointer after freeing it?
  21. Finding the address range of the data segment
  22. Is it safe to realloc memory allocated with new?
  23. Why do you specify the size when using malloc in C?
  24. When should I use malloc in C and when don’t I?
  25. What happens if I try to access memory beyond a malloc()’d region?
  26. What causes memory fragmentation in .NET
  27. dynamic allocation/deallocation of 2D & 3D arrays
  28. Why exactly should I not call free() on variables not allocated by malloc()?
  29. Memory Leaks in GTK hello_world program
  30. C++ delete does not free all memory (Windows)

Leave a Comment