Structs and mem allocation

Hi all,

I have a struct which contains not only basic data but other structs as well, some of which are large, I allocate my main struct the normal way and free it but I notice that it will crash on the free when I have too many larger structs within my main struct that I allocated mem for, it looks like this:

Code:

---


struct mainStruct {

int blah1;
int blah2;

bigStruct data1;
bigStruct data2;
bigStruct data3;

}


mainStruct myStruct = malloc(sizeof(mainStruct));

free(myStruct); // crash

---

is the correct practice to declare 'bigStruct' as a pointer and allocate mem for it, I've tried this and there is no problem but now i'm wondering about all the other places where I have structs within structs(most are pretty light) but what is the right thing to do here?

Thanks in advance...

Yes, myStruct should be a pointer. If you allocate memory you get a pointer to the memory, not the struct instance itself. (And you can free only pointers.)

I haven't touched C in a long time, but memory allocation isn't mandatory for structs. They are treated as normal variables and placed on the stack...