How is dynamically allocated space freed when a program is interrupted using Ctrl-C?

Question

Given the following code:

#include 

int main()
{
    int *p;
    p = (int *)malloc(10 * sizeof(int));

    while(1);
    return 0;
}
<         


        

Answer 1

the memory is actually not "free()"d at all.

memory acquired by the operating system is page size (4kbytes of memory usually). whenever a process runs out of memory it acquires additional pages, these are the space malloc() actually uses. when a process terminates all pages are returned to the operating system making calling free actually unnecessary. if your programme is a server or similar every piece of memory that is never freed will only be returned when the programme is actually killed - making it every more memory hungry.