Allocating memory to char* C language

Question

Is it the correct way of allocating memory to a char*.

char* sides =\"5\";

char* tempSides;

tempSides = (char*)malloc(strlen(inSides) * sizeof(char));
         


        

Answer 1

As has been pointed out, you missed allocating space for the terminating NUL chararacter. But I also wanted to point out a couple of other things that can make your code more concise.

By definition, sizeof(char) is always 1, so you can shorten your allocation line to:

tempSides = (char*)malloc(strlen(inSides) + 1);

Another thing is that this looks like you are doing to duplicate the string. There is a built in function that does that for you:

tempSides = strdup(inSides);

This handles getting the length, allocating the correct number of bytes and copying the data.