Dynamically allocated memory question

Consider this:

Code:

---

int i;
char *v[MAXELEMENTS];

for (i = 0; i < MAXELEMENTS; i++) {
    if ((v[i] = malloc(blablabla)) == NULL) {
        printf("error\n");
        while (--i >= 0)
            free(v[i]);
        break;
    }

    do something with v[i]...
}

---

Is the part in red necessary if I exit the program right after displaying the error message?

If it exits then i guess it should be fine, cause after program exits, the memory used by it , is anyway returned back to the OS. But i don't think you can always count on that.

Nevertheless, its always in your best interest to free what you allocate.

Most (all?) OS's should return the memory when a program exits, but if you sometime somewhere somehow program for a small embedded system this might not be the case...

>Is the part in red necessary if I exit the program right after displaying the error message?
Necessary? Nope. :) But it's definitely a good idea, especially since nobody tries to write bad code, and good code usually gets reused. So what could terminate immediately now would probably become a library later and then you'd have a nice little memory leak.