have to free the unused memory

[Thiruparan]

CtCI-6th-Edition-C/Ch 01. Arrays and Strings/6. String Compression/main.c

Line 25 in b11bb24

return c;

[Thiruparan]

malloc allocated 2*lenghth +1 memory, but now used memory is less than length , so we may need free the unused memory

[cavaliercoder]

The memory allocator will track how much memory was allocated for that pointer, c and free all of it, including the unused bytes.

The extra memory is to account for the case where compression actually increases the size of the input, where there is a succession of unique characters (e.g. abcd) and they are expanded (e.g. a1b1c1d1).

It's been a while since I've looked at this question and I don't have it close by. Please correct me!