Question

I was compiling this program and the compilation went fine. The moment I executed it, it failed with free(): invalid pointer error.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void)
{
    char *p = NULL;
    if ((p = (char *) malloc((int)sizeof(char) * 100)) == NULL) {
        printf("ERROR: unable to allocate memory\n");
        return -1;
    }
    p += 50;
    free(p);    
    return 0;
}

I compiled using gcc -o memtest m.c command.

Are there any GCC compiler options that will give a warning/error/indication about these invalid pointer errors during compile time?

Answer 1

No. Use Electric Fence or Valgrind.