Dynamically malloc()-able pointers in a struct?

[Andrew Koenig]

In article <448 at blake.acs.washington.edu>, phaedra at blake.acs.washington.edu (J. Anderson) writes:
> struct xyzzy {
> 	int plugh;
> 	long black_rod;
> 	char *foobar;	/* This wants to be a pointer to a variable-length
> 			 * array
> 			 */
> }

Nothing particularly hard about this, except that you must
allocate two separate areas of memory, one for an `xyzzy' object
and one for the character array addressed by `foobar'.  The
`xyzzy' object may be a local variable, of course:

	struct xyzzy a;
	a.foobar = malloc(n);

If you want the `xyzzy' object to be dynamic as well, do this:

	struct xyzzy *p;
	p = (struct xyzzy *) malloc (sizeof(struct xyzzy));
	p->foobar = malloc(n);

To free it, reverse the process:

	free(p->foobar);
	free(p);

What's the problem?
-- 
				--Andrew Koenig
				  ark at europa.att.com