Does every malloc call have to be freed

Question

From what I understand because malloc dynamically assigns mem , you need to free that mem so that it can be used again.

1. What happens if you return a char* that

Answer 1

1) The same way you'd free the memory normally, i.e.

p = func();
//...
free(p);

The trick is in making sure that you always do it...

2) Generally speaking, yes. But you should still free any memory you use as good practice. Not spending the time to figure out where to free the memory is just being lazy.