What REALLY happens when you don't free after malloc?

Question

This has been something that has bothered me for ages now.

We are all taught in school (at least, I was) that you MUST free every pointer that is allocated. I\'m a

Answer 1

=== What about future proofing and code reuse? ===

If you don't write the code to free the objects, then you are limiting the code to only being safe to use when you can depend on the memory being free'd by the process being closed ... i.e. small one-time use projects or "throw-away"^[1] projects)... where you know when the process will end.

If you do write the code that free()s all your dynamically allocated memory, then you are future proofing the code and letting others use it in a larger project.

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^{[1] regarding "throw-away" projects. Code used in "Throw-away" projects has a way of not being thrown away. Next thing you know ten years have passed and your "throw-away" code is still being used).}

^{I heard a story about some guy who wrote some code just for fun to make his hardware work better. He said "just a hobby, won't be big and professional". Years later lots of people are using his "hobby" code.}