Array deallocation

[charisma]

Hi!!!

I am really in a mess now. I have written this compiler which uses huge datastructures everythin in the form of array. by the time i realised that pointer wud have been a better option, i had written about 75% of the code. now the problem is, there is a serious memory overflow. i am not able to deallocate array from the memory. infact i can do that by setting the structures each to null. but well there are some 10-15 structures and i'll have to write seperate functions for each of these and more worser the each structures is quite complicated.
is there any way i can deallocate memory from the array, like using free. i used free(), but i guess its more for pointers and my os(dos) crashes whenever i used free(array). wat is the most easier and
hopefully the best way to deallocate memory from "an array"?

thnx a lot in advance,
R Karthick

[Shiro]

You can not deallocate an array. Function free() must be used in combination with some dynamic memory allocation function like malloc(). You can't free() an array. I would recommend using dynamic memory allocation and replace this by the arrays. Isn't there an easier way to adapt your code? If the interfaces to the structures are seperated from their implementation, then you could just change the implementation without adapting other parts of the code.

[Magos]

You have to be more specific. You should always free() everything that you malloc():ed, and free it in reverse order if it is nestled (ie if you allocate memory for an array of pointers, which in turn will allocate more memory).
You should also set the pointers to NULL after freeing them.

. i am not able to deallocate array from the memory. infact i can do that by setting the structures each to null

You don't deallocate memory when setting the pointer to NULL. Use free().

[ammar]

It means that you cannot dynamically deallocate a memory that is dynamically allocated.