Thread: help on linked list and memory leak

hello all,

I created a linked list like this:

Code:

struct storedata
{
    int      iData;
    char   cData;
    struct storedata *next;
} datastore;

to store data the size of which may varies from time to time.

And I tried to free memory that allocated by malloc() before program quits. The confusion here is I only free the pointers of every nodes like this:

Code:

void freelist(struct storedata *tobefreed)
{
    struct storedata * tmp;
    while(tobefreed != NULL)
    {
        tmp = tobefreed->ptr;
        free(tobefreed);
        tobefreed = tmp;
    }
}

But a tutorial says every member in the struct also needs to be freed, like this:

Code:

void freelist(struct storedata *tobefreed)
{
    struct storedata * tmp;
    while(tobefreed != NULL)
    {
        tmp = tobefreed->ptr;

        //-- added lines [begin] --
        free(tobefreed->iData);
        free(tobefreed->cData;
        //-- added lines [end] --

        free(tobefreed);
        tobefreed = tmp;
    }
}

If it is true, why? I only allocated memory for pointer node, not for members it contains.

thank you salem,

that is exactly what i guessed. now it's been made sure.

thank you.