What is a malloc function in C language?

The malloc() function stands for memory allocation, that allocate a block of memory dynamically.

It reserves the memory space for a specified size and returns the null pointer, which points to the memory location.

malloc() function carries garbage value. The pointer returned is of type void.

The syntax for malloc() function is as follows −

ptr = (castType*) malloc(size);

Example

The following example shows the usage of malloc() function.

 Live Demo

#include<stdio.h>
#include<string.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
int main(){
   char *MemoryAlloc;
   /* memory allocated dynamically */
   MemoryAlloc = malloc( 15 * sizeof(char) );
   if(MemoryAlloc== NULL ){
      printf("Couldn't able to allocate requested memory
");
   }else{
      strcpy( MemoryAlloc,"TutorialsPoint");
   }
   printf("Dynamically allocated memory content : %s
", MemoryAlloc);
   free(MemoryAlloc);
}

Output

When the above program is executed, it produces the following result −

Dynamically allocated memory content: TutorialsPoint