Thread: Any problem or memory leak here?

Hi,

I have the following codes:

Code:

struct ABC {
  int x;
  float y;
  int z;
}

...


struct ABC *abc = malloc( sizeof( struct ABC ) );
int *ptr = ( int* )abc;
free( ptr );

When I free ptr, is any memory leak here? since I force to change the data type from 'struct ABC*' to 'int*'.

Probably not a memory leak, since malloc and free work on blocks of memory... but ar really bad thing to do programming wise since you didn't malloc ptr...

It's not a leak -- everything gets cast to a void* when you send it off to free() anyway, so what type you're using it as doesn't matter. The issue that was being pointed out is that, at least as written, you've got other copies of the pointer running around, which now all of a sudden are invalidated. If you're careful with how you pass your pointers around, you can make it work; but you'll have to be careful.

The reason why I need this like that.

I have an array which is int** ptrList which stores all pointers of struct XXX. And this array stores different struct, so it can't use a generic type.

And the external handler able to pop the element from the array and handle with different struct.

Thanks all of you!