free() on stack memory

Question

I\'m supporting some c code on Solaris, and I\'ve seen something weird at least I think it is:

char new_login[64];
...
strcpy(new_login, (char *)login);
...
         


        

Answer 1

IN MOST CASES, you can only free() something allocated on the heap. See http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/free.html .

HOWEVER: One way to go about doing what you'd like to be doing is to scope temporary variables allocated on the stack. like so:

{
char new_login[64];
... /* No later-used variables should be allocated on the stack here */
strcpy(new_login, (char *)login);
}
...