Life after free?

[Conor P. Cahill]

In article <606 at oglvee.UUCP> norm at oglvee.UUCP (Norman Joseph) writes:
>In <quan.654410256 at sol> quan at sol.surv.utas.oz (Stephen Quan) writes:
>
>>char *funny(ch)
>>char ch;
>>{
>>  char *tmp;
>>  [...]
>>  return tmp;
>>}
>
>No, but I -do- have a comment on returning tmp at all.  The storage
>class in the declaration of tmp defaults to "auto".  This gives the

However, if tmp is a pointer and you return the value contained in 
the pointer, who cares about tmp.  It is just used during the 
exection of the function.  The fact that tmp is no longer a valid
variable outside of this function will have no effect on the
availability of the data at the malloc'd region that tmp pointed to 
while it existed.

Note that I am NOT saying that you can free(tmp) and then return it.  If
the free was not there, the use of tmp would be totally correct.


-- 
Conor P. Cahill            (703)430-9247        Virtual Technologies, Inc.,
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