Question

I’m a little bit confused about this expression:

char *s = "abc";

Does the string literal get created on the stack?

I know that this expression

char *s = (char *)malloc(10 * sizeof(char));

allocates memory on the heap and this expression

char s[] = "abc";

allocates memory on the stack, but I’m totally unsure what the first expression does.

Answer 1

Typically, the string literal "abc" is stored in a read only part of the executable. The pointer s would be created on the stack(or placed in a register, or just optimized away) – and point to that string literal which lives “elsewhere”.