Thread: strdup

I'm having a few problems with memory leaks in my linked list. I think the problems may be with the strdup() function. We've been given this so I don't know how it works. I looked at the old entries on the board, and found this link, which was quite useful:
http://www.mkssoftware.com/docs/man3/strdup.3.asp
However, I'm not sure what I have to free. I tried the following:

Code:

/* for information */
typedef struct _Node {
    Contents *      item;
    struct _Node *  next;
} Node;
typedef Node* List;
List    list;
typedef char Contents;
List    ListPrepend(List list, Contents * item);
[...]

  char  str_contents[200];
  scanf("%s", str_contents);
  list = ListPrepend(list, strdup(str_contents));
  free(str_contents);

I don't really understand what strdup is doing here. Why can't I just send str_contents to ListPrepend?

I have a function that goes like this:

Code:

List ListRemove(List list, Contents * item)
{
    Node *searchNode, *prevNode;

    /* look at each node until found item */
    for(searchNode = ListFront(list), prevNode = NULL;
        searchNode != NULL && NodeContents(searchNode) != item;
        prevNode = searchNode, searchNode = NodeNext(searchNode));

    /* item not found */
    if(searchNode == NULL) return list;

    /* item is first node */
    if(prevNode == NULL) list = NodeNext(list);

    /* item is another node */
    else prevNode->next = NodeNext(searchNode);

    free(searchNode);
        
    return list;
}

is this OK?
If I run the program with bcheck, and enter n items into the list, then quit, I get 2*n memory leaks. If I remove the items in the list, I get n memory leaks. The bcheck .err file seems to point at strdup as the culprit, so I thought that may be the problem.

That function doesn't free the contents of the node, just the memory allocated to the node structure itself.

Either:

a) free the contents of node in the function

or

b) free the contents of the node elsewhere.

Which you do depends on what you're program does and how you want it to work. If you never use the contents once the node to which it belongs is removed from the list then free the contents in the function. If it's used elsewhere, whether it's in the list or not, then free it when you've finished with it (and it's been removed from the list).

Ian Woods

Great, no memory leaks now.
Thanks to my hirsute friend for sorting that one out.