Memory leak concepts - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Memory Leak Concepts

📖 Scenario: You are writing a simple C program that uses dynamic memory allocation to store numbers. You want to understand how forgetting to free memory causes memory leaks.

🎯 Goal: Build a small C program that allocates memory for an integer array, uses it, and then properly frees the memory to avoid memory leaks.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a pointer variable to hold dynamically allocated memory

Allocate memory for 5 integers using malloc

Assign values to the allocated memory

Free the allocated memory using free

Print the values stored in the allocated memory

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Dynamic memory allocation is used in programs that need flexible memory sizes, like games, databases, or any software handling variable data.

💼 Career

Understanding memory management and avoiding leaks is crucial for software developers working in C or systems programming to write efficient and stable applications.

1

Create a pointer and allocate memory

Create a pointer variable called numbers of type int *. Use malloc to allocate memory for 5 integers and assign it to numbers.

C

#include 
#include 

int main() {

    // Create pointer and allocate memory for 5 integers
    
    // Your code here

    return 0;
}

Need a hint?

Use int *numbers = malloc(5 * sizeof(int)); to allocate memory for 5 integers.

2

Assign values to allocated memory

Use a for loop with variable i from 0 to 4 to assign the value i * 10 to numbers[i].

C

#include 
#include 

int main() {

    int *numbers = malloc(5 * sizeof(int));

    // Assign values to numbers array
    
    // Your code here

    return 0;
}

Need a hint?

Use a for loop to assign values like numbers[i] = i * 10;.

3

Print the values stored in the allocated memory

Use a for loop with variable i from 0 to 4 to print each value in numbers[i] using printf. Print each number on its own line.

C

#include 
#include 

int main() {

    int *numbers = malloc(5 * sizeof(int));

    for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
        numbers[i] = i * 10;
    }

    // Print values stored in numbers
    
    // Your code here

    return 0;
}

Need a hint?

Use a for loop and printf("%d\n", numbers[i]); to print each number.

4

Free the allocated memory

Use free(numbers); to release the memory allocated by malloc before the program ends.

C

#include 
#include 

int main() {

    int *numbers = malloc(5 * sizeof(int));

    for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
        numbers[i] = i * 10;
    }

    for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
        printf("%d\n", numbers[i]);
    }

    // Free the allocated memory
    
    // Your code here

    return 0;
}

Need a hint?

Use free(numbers); to release the memory.