TC> I strongly recommend against "mass 
 TC> allocation/deallocation" because IMHO, you
 TC> can run into lots of trouble with memory leaks and 
 TC> holes. I like to deallocate
Either:
a) You've learned alot in your absence from the C_ECHO there, or
b) You've learned alot since you got back to the C_ECHO, or
c) You're a natural.  ;-)
 TC> the memory right after I no longer need it. Yes, it is 
 TC> best to use a free()
 TC> for each malloc(). That is about the only* way I know 
 TC> how to do it right now
 TC> (because I'm still not that great at C to try anything else). I also 
don't
Only way I know how, too...
 TC> like to have a lot of allocated memory "laying around" 
 TC> unused when the program
 TC> is running. I think it could slow the program down 
 TC> some, and/or decrease the
 TC> amount of space you have ready for other things.
Well, there are a lot of considerations here.  Extraneously allocated memory 
in 32-bit systems (Win32, OS/2, DOS32) can be swapped out of memory to disk.  
This disk swapping (and the swapping back in if you merely free it) can slow 
down the system.  Or, if you are no longer using a small block of memory in a 
4k page, it can slow things down whether free'd or not.  There are a lot of 
things that have to be taken into account when you worry about micro 
optimizations like this - and this is one of those things that a compiler 
cannot help you with automatically!  At this point, I would refer you to the 
design documentation to your compiler, OS, and hardware.
However, if you have a 32-byte chunk of memory you no longer need, and need 
to allocate <32 bytes, you're best off to free the original chunk and 
allocate the new chunk to "save space."  However, no one guarantees that 
malloc will use the just-freed memory... (I think DOS compilers usually do, 
mostly because of the 640k limit)  An interesting tidbit is how virtual 
memory systems (Windows, OS/2, etc.) can make more memory available easily 
(in page-sized chunks) if you've recently freed up a previous page.  However, 
when a page is 4k, and OS/2 has 512 meg per process, and Win32 has at least 
2GB per process, that's a minor issue.  :-)
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