free is a function to deallocate memory obtained from malloc and other functions in C. Do not use this tag to refer to free software. Asking for software recommendation is off-topic on Stack Overflow. If you have a question about free software, you can ask here: https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/
free() is the Standard C (ISO 9899:1989) function declared in <stdlib.h> to deallocate memory allocated by a previous call to malloc, calloc, or realloc. On POSIX (IEEE Std 1003.1) systems, it is also used to free memory obtained from calls to posix_memalign and strdup.
NAME
free - free allocated memory
SYNOPSIS
#include <stdlib.h> void free(void *ptr);
DESCRIPTION
The
free()function frees the memory space pointed to by ptr, which must have been returned by a previous call tomalloc(),calloc()orrealloc(). Otherwise, or if free(ptr) has already been called before, undefined behavior occurs. If ptr is NULL, no operation is performed.
RETURN VALUE
The
free()function returns no value.
Wikipedia
References
- free - cppreference.com
- free - The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7
- Ubuntu Manpage: malloc, free, calloc, realloc - Allocate and free dynamic memory
- Memory Allocation Routines - C Run-Time Library Reference (Visual Studio 2012)
- free - C Run-Time Library Reference (Visual Studio 2012)
