How to allocate and deallocate heap memory for 2D array?

Question

I\'m used to PHP, but I\'m starting to learn C. I\'m trying to create a program that reads a file line by line and stores each line to an array.

So far I have a prog

Answer 1

Instead of an array here, you could also use a linked list, The code is simpler, but the allocation is more frequent and may suffer from fragmentation.

As long as you don't plan to do much random access (Which is O(n) here), iteration is about as simple as a regular array.

typedef struct Line Line;
struct Line{
    char text[LINE_MAX];
    Line *next;
};

Line *mkline()
{
    Line *l = malloc(sizeof(Line));
    if(!l)
       error();
    return l;
}

main()
{
    Line *lines = mkline();
    Line *lp = lines;
    while(fgets(lp->text, sizeof lp->text, stdin)!=NULL){
         lp->next = mkline();
         lp = lp->next;
    }
    lp->next = NULL;
}