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carraysmemorymemory-managementprogramming-languages

Array in a memory-constrained system

Consider that my system has memory, but it is scattered in different places (fragmented). There are no four contiguous memory locations that are free. In that scenario, if I declare a character array of size 10 in the C language, what will happen ?

Solution

  • If "my system has memory, but it is scattered in different places(fragmented)" means, that heap virtual memory is fragmented, and "declare a character array of size 10" means, that you create character array of size 10 in stack memory:

    char str[10];

    , then array will be successfully created.

    If "declare a character array of size 10" means, that you allocate memory with malloc() (allocate in heap):

    char *str2;
str2 = (char*) malloc(10 * sizeof(char));

    , then malloc() will return NULL.