Free the stack implemented in C

Question

I implement a stack and its functions in C. Now after all the functions were called, I wanted to free the stack.

My question is should I free the base pointer of stack "st" first or just directly free the stack "st"? Both seems work in my code.

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

#define init_size 10
#define increment 1

typedef struct sqStack
{
    int* top;
    int* base;
    int stack_size;
}sqStack;

int init_stack(sqStack* sq)
{
    if(sq->base==NULL)
    {
       sq->base = (int*)malloc(init_size*sizeof(int));
    }
    if(sq->base==NULL) exit(-1);
    sq->stack_size=init_size;
    sq->top=sq->base;
    return 1;
}
int push(sqStack* sq, int e)
{
    if(sq==NULL) exit(-1);

    if(sq->top-sq->base==sq->stack_size-1)//pointer top reaches the top of the stack
    {
        int* q = (int*)realloc(sq->base,(sq->stack_size+increment)*sizeof(int));
        if(q==NULL)  exit(-1);
            sq->base=q;
        sq->top=sq->base+sq->stack_size-1;
            sq->stack_size += increment;

    }
    *sq->top++=e;
    return 1;
}
int pop(sqStack* sq,int* e)
{
    if(sq==NULL) exit(-1);
    if(sq->base==sq->top)  exit(-1);
    sq->top--;
    *e=*sq->top;
    sq->stack_size--;
    return *e;
}
int top(sqStack* sq,int* e)
{
    if(sq==NULL) exit(-1);
    if(sq->base==sq->top)  exit(-1);
    *e=*(sq->top-1);
    return *e;
}
int empty(sqStack* sq)
{
    if(sq->base==sq->top) return 1;
    else return 0;
}

int main() {
    sqStack* st= (sqStack*)calloc(1,sizeof(sqStack))  ;
    int e;
    init_stack(st);
    for(int i=0;i<12;i++)
    {
        push(st,i+1);

    }
    for(int i=0;i<12;i++)
    {
        printf("%d\n",top(st,&e));
        printf("%d\n",pop(st,&e));
    }
    free(st->base);
    free(st);
    return 0;
}

The result is: 12 12 11 11 10 10 9 9 8 8 7 7 6 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 each number locates on a single line.

Answer 1

What you have is correct in terms of malloc and free.

You should only pass to free what was returned from malloc or realloc. You allocate space for the struct and for the stack and you free both, so you're not leaking any memory.

You don't want to free(st) first because after doing so the memory that st was pointing to is no longer valid and you can't subsequently free(st->base) safely. Also, because free knows nothing about the contents of the given memory, it doesn't attempt to free any pointers that the memory might contain. So just calling free(st) leaks the memory in st->base.