malloc for struct and pointer in C

Question

Suppose I want to define a structure representing length of the vector and its values as:

struct Vector{
    double* x;
    int n;
};

Now,

Answer 1

In principle you're doing it correct already. For what you want you do need two malloc()s.

Just some comments:

struct Vector y = (struct Vector*)malloc(sizeof(struct Vector));
y->x = (double*)malloc(10*sizeof(double));

should be

struct Vector *y = malloc(sizeof *y); /* Note the pointer */
y->x = calloc(10, sizeof *y->x);

In the first line, you allocate memory for a Vector object. malloc() returns a pointer to the allocated memory, so y must be a Vector pointer. In the second line you allocate memory for an array of 10 doubles.

In C you don't need the explicit casts, and writing sizeof *y instead of sizeof(struct Vector) is better for type safety, and besides, it saves on typing.

You can rearrange your struct and do a single malloc() like so:

struct Vector{    
    int n;
    double x[];
};
struct Vector *y = malloc(sizeof *y + 10 * sizeof(double));