How can I correctly handle malloc failure in C, especially when there is more than one malloc?

Question

Suppose this is a part of my code:

 int foo()
 {  
    char *p, *q ;
    if((p = malloc(BUFSIZ)) == NULL) {
        return ERROR_CODE;
    }
    if((q = malloc(B         


        

Answer 1

Since it is perfectly OK to pass NULL to free(), you could allocate everything that you need in a "straight line", check everything in a single shot, and then free everything once you are done, regardless of whether or not you have actually done any work:

char *p = malloc(BUFSIZ);
char *q = malloc(BUFSIZ);
char *r = malloc(BUFSIZ);
if (p && q && r) {
    /* Do some other work... */
}
free(p);
free(q);
free(r);

This works as long as there are no intermediate dependencies, i.e. you do not have structures with multi-level dependencies. When you do, it is a good idea to define a function for freeing such a structure, without assuming that all memory blocks are non-NULL.