Is calloc(4, 6) the same as calloc(6, 4)?

Question

I\'m a beginner C programmer, and I assumed that this would be the case, but would like some affirmation if possible.

If they are the same, why not just take one arg

Answer 1

To the excellent responses posted, I want to add one more point of difference between using calloc(nelem, elsize) versus malloc(nelem * elsize): quality implementations of calloc will ensure that if your nelem and elsize were big enough to cause an integer overflow when multiplied together, it will fail rather than cause an undersized allocation, as a naive malloc invocation would.

Just this feature alone would be enough for me to prefer calloc to malloc. Background reading.