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

This code will usually work alright, but consider the problem of code reuse.

You may have written some code snippet which doesn't free allocated memory, it is run in such a way that memory is then automatically reclaimed. Seems allright.

Then someone else copies your snippet into his project in such a way that it is executed one thousand times per second. That person now has a huge memory leak in his program. Not very good in general, usually fatal for a server application.

Code reuse is typical in enterprises. Usually the company owns all the code its employees produce and every department may reuse whatever the company owns. So by writing such "innocently-looking" code you cause potential headache to other people. This may get you fired.