The Hidden Memory Leak in strdup: Understanding Heap Allocation in C

In this session, Programming with Sikander breaks down a tricky code snippet involving the strdup function to answer a common technical question: How many bytes of memory are leaked in this code?. While the code may look simple, what happens behind the scenes in your computer's memory is crucial for any C programmer to understand.
What you will learn in this video:
Internal Mechanism of strdup: Discover how strdup determines the length of a string, reserves memory in the heap segment at runtime, and copies the data (including the null character) into that new block
.
Stack vs. Heap: We explain why your local arrays are automatically deallocated from the stack, while strdup uses the heap to avoid creating "dangling pointers"
.
Identifying Memory Leaks: Learn why failing to use the free() function leads to a memory leak, even if you didn't explicitly call malloc yourself
.
The 9-Byte Trap: See a practical example where a string with 8 characters results in exactly 9 bytes of leaked memory (8 characters + 1 null character)
.
Advanced Debugging: Watch a demonstration of the -fsanitize=address compiler flag in GCC to automatically detect and report memory leaks in your programs

Mastering these concepts is essential for writing efficient, professional-grade C code and passing technical coding interviews.

Видео The Hidden Memory Leak in strdup: Understanding Heap Allocation in C канала Programming with Sikander