Question

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c difference between malloc and calloc

Is there any situation where you would prefer malloc over calloc. i know both malloc and calloc allocate memory dynamically and that calloc also initializes all bits in alloted memory to zero.
From this i would guess its always better to use calloc over malloc. Or is there some situations where malloc is better? Performance may be?

Answer 1

If you need the dynamically allocated memory to be zero-initialized then use calloc.

If you don’t need the dynamically allocated memory to be zero-initialized, then use malloc.

You don’t always need zero-initialized memory; if you don’t need the memory zero-initialized, don’t pay the cost of initializing it. For example, if you allocate memory and then immediately copy data to fill the allocated memory, there’s no reason whatsoever to perform zero-initialization.

calloc and malloc are functions that do different things: use whichever one is most appropriate for the task you need to accomplish.