Difference between malloc and calloc?

Question

What is the difference between doing:

ptr = (char **) malloc (MAXELEMS * sizeof(char *));

or:

ptr = (char **) calloc (MAXEL         


        

Answer 1

Difference 1:

malloc() usually allocates the memory block and it is initialized memory segment.

calloc() allocates the memory block and initialize all the memory block to 0.

Difference 2:

If you consider malloc() syntax, it will take only 1 argument. Consider the following example below:

data_type ptr = (cast_type *)malloc( sizeof(data_type)*no_of_blocks );

Ex: If you want to allocate 10 block of memory for int type,

int *ptr = (int *) malloc(sizeof(int) * 10 );

If you consider calloc() syntax, it will take 2 arguments. Consider the following example below:

data_type ptr = (cast_type *)calloc(no_of_blocks, (sizeof(data_type)));

Ex: if you want to allocate 10 blocks of memory for int type and Initialize all that to ZERO,

int *ptr = (int *) calloc(10, (sizeof(int)));

Similarity:

Both malloc() and calloc() will return void* by default if they are not type casted .!