Freeing strings in C

Question

If I would write:

char *a=malloc(sizeof(char)*4);
a=\"abc\";
char *b=\"abc\";

do I need to free this memory, or is it done by my system?

Answer 1

You cannot assign string in this way with C

a = "abc"

However if you use malloc then you have to use free, like this

free(a);

But pay attention if you use free(a) in your example you get an error. Because after the malloc you change the pointer a value to the static string "abc"; So the next free(a) try to free a static data. And you get the error.