Question

How to Allocate memory for a name in C?

Answer 1

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

#define MAX_NAME_LENGTH 32

int main()
{
    char * name = (char *)(malloc(sizeof(char) * MAX_NAME_LENGTH));
    strcpy(name, "John Doe");
    printf("Hello, %s!\n", name);
    free(name);

    return 0;
}

1. First, you allocate the memory with malloc(). Since it returns you a void *, you need to cast it to the right type (char * in our example).
2. Then, you fill that memory with value. You absolutely cannot do name = "John Doe", because you'll loose track of your allocated memory (causing a memory leak) and later, when you'll try to free the memory, now it points to a location that was not allocated by you and thus, you must not deallocate it. So use strcpy() to fill the memory with string data.
3. Then you use your variable (we simply print it in the example).
4. Finally, you need to release the allocated memory with free().

I hope this gives you a good idea of how to deal with dynamic memory de/allocation in your C program.

Good luck!

Answer 2

by using calloc and malloc you can do so.

Comments

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
int main() {
    char *name;
    name = (char *)malloc(50 * sizeof(char));
    if (name == NULL) {
        printf("Memory allocation failed.\n");
        return 1;
    }
    printf("Enter your name: ");
    fgets(name, 50, stdin);
    size_t len = strlen(name);
    if (len > 0 && name[len - 1] == '\n') {
        name[len - 1] = '\0';
    }
    printf("Hello, %s!\n", name);
    free(name);

    return 0;
}