Differences between malloc() and calloc()? - C faqs

Differences between malloc() and calloc()?
Allocation of memory at the time of execution is called dynamic memory allocation. It is done using the standard library functions malloc() and calloc(). It is defined in "stdlib.h".

malloc(): used to allocate required number of bytes in memory at runtime. It takes one argument, viz. size in bytes to be allocated.

Syntax:
void * malloc(size_t size);

Example:
a = (int*) malloc(4);
4 is the size (in bytes) of memory to be allocated.

calloc(): used to allocate required number of bytes in memory at runtime. It needs two arguments viz.,
1. total number of data and
2. size of each data.

Syntax:
void * calloc(size_t nmemb, size_t size);

Example:
a = (int*) calloc(8, sizeof(int));
Here sizeof indicates the size of the data type and 8 indicates that we want to reserve space for storing 8 integers.

Differences between malloc() and calloc() are:
1. Number of arguments differ.
2. By default, memory allocated by malloc() contains garbage values. Whereas memory allocated by calloc() contains all zeros.
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Difference between calloc() and malloc( )

1. calloc(...) allocates a block of memory for an array of elements of a certain size. By default the block is initialized to 0. The total number of memory allocated will be (number_of_elements * size).malloc(...) takes in only a single argument which is the memory required in bytes. malloc(...) allocated bytes of memory and not blocks of memory like calloc(...).

2.malloc(...) allocates memory blocks and returns a void pointer to the allocated space, or NULL if there is insufficient memory available.calloc(...) allocates an array in memory with elements initialized to 0 and returns a pointer to the allocated space. calloc(...) calls malloc(...) in order to use the C++ _set_new_mode function to set the new handler mode.