Thread: malloc() are my comments correct

/* First of all am I right in thinking that malloc(10) in the program */
/* below could be malloc(6) hello + '\0' = 6 and if so whats the */
/* reason for malloc(10), secondly could I have something like */
/* malloc(amount) if I declared a variable int amount; then did */
/* printf("Input amount of numbers to be stored"); */
/* scanf("%d",&amount); */

/* Finally this memory has to be freed before the program terminates */
/* to avoid a memory leak, what is and what does a memory leak do */


#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <alloc.h>
#include <process.h>
#include<conio.h>

int main(void)
{
char *str;

/* allocate memory for string */
if ((str = (char *) malloc(10)) == NULL)
{
printf("Not enough memory to allocate buffer\n");
exit(1); /* terminate program if out of memory */
}

/* copy "Hello" into string */
strcpy(str, "Hello");

/* display string */
printf("String is %s\n", str);

/* free memory */

free(str);

return 0;
}

I took a look at the standard and noticed that malloc does return void *. But in the examples, no casting is done.

A comment to the code:

Code:

    /* allocate memory for string */ 
    if ((str = (char *) malloc (10)) == NULL) 
    { 
        printf("Not enough memory to allocate buffer\n"); 
        
        #ifdef SHIRO_CODE
        /* I would use a return instead of exit, mainly since
            main is of type int, so it should return an int when
            exiting. This int can be an errorvalue. */
        return ERROR_VALUE;
        #else
        exit(1); /* terminate program if out of memory */ 
        #endif
    }