Why malloc return Void Pointer?/

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Why malloc return void pointer?
Because we can typecast any data-type into any another data type,then if malloc return int type pointer then also we can typecast it into another data type pointer,then why return void pointer?

Posted 10-Mar-13 23:16pm

BaldevS

Updated 11-Mar-13 0:21am

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CPallini 11-Mar-13 6:50am

Because void * is C's 'generic' :-)

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nv3 · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-11T00:05:00

The reason is that malloc has no clue as to what data type you are really allocating; it just allocates raw memory. Returning a void* guarantees that you cast the pointer to something useful. Returning any other pointer type would risk that you forget to cast the pointer to what it really points to.

Btw: int would be a very bad choice for the return value as it isn't even a pointer. It is not guaranteed that a pointer value will fit into an int (for example that is so on many 64-bit architectures). Treating an int and a pointer as basically the same is a common error that many C beginners make. And some legacy code also shows this bad habit.

Pranit Kothari · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-11T00:15:00

Solution 2

There are two reasons, first, malloc doesn't know why you need memory. So it just return number of bytes asked to return. Secondly (I am not sure this is purposefully done for this reason) you cannot dereference void * easily so it can help you to avoid accidents.

Posted 11-Mar-13 0:15am

Pranit Kothari

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CPallini 11-Mar-13 6:52am

My 5+.

BaldevS 11-Mar-13 7:50am

i got it..thnks 4 it..

[no name] 11-Mar-13 6:57am

Thanks CPallini.