-=> Quoting Frank Adam to All <=-

Hi Frank,

FA> Could someone tell or show me how to free dynamically allocated
FA> memory in one function from another function or main ?

FA> eg:
FA> main()
FA> {
FA>  foo();
FA>  }
FA>  
FA> char* foo()
FA> {
FA>  char *s = malloc(80);
FA>  }

FA> If this function is to return s, freeing it before return would
FA> not be a good idea, is that true ?

Very true. :)

FA> If it is, how would i then get access to s to free it ?  It's
FA> out of scope, as silly as is i've tried free(s) from main,
FA> compiler says "what s?" of course.  Btw, i have thought about
FA> freeing it before returning, and it *seems* to work fine in DOS,
FA> but i don't know how safe that is.

You should *NEVER* attempt to access memory that you have freed.  :(

FA> I also believe that in a multitask environment, that would be
FA> fatal if another program got a slice between free() and return,
FA> am i thinking straight here or not ?

Sort of. :) Try something like this:

int main(void)
{
  char *p;

  /* ... */
  p = foo();
  /* ... */

  free(p);
  return 0;
}

char *foo()
{
  char *s = malloc(80);

  /* ... */
  return s;
}

Do you see what's going on?

Michael Stapleton of Graphic Bits.

 * AmyBW v2.10 *
... In C, the solution probably has to do with asterisks or something.
--- AmyBW v2.10