Are “malloc(sizeof(struct a *))” and “malloc(sizeof(struct a))” the same?

Question

This question is a continuation of Malloc call crashing, but works elsewhere

I tried the following program and I found it working (i.e. not crashing - and this was m

Answer 1

is it valid to assign that to struct a * instead of struct a ** ?

Well, technically speaking, it is valid to assign like that, but it is wrong (UB) to dereference such pointer. You don't want to do this.

valid to access/de-reference the allocated array(n-elements)-of-pointers-to-type-"struct a" using pointer-to-"struct a" ?

No, undefined behavior.