Q: When I call malloc to allocate memory for a pointer which is local to a function, do I have to explicitly free it?
A: Yes. Remember that a pointer is different from what it points to. Local variables [footnote] are deallocated when the function returns, but in the case of a pointer variable, this means that the pointer is deallocated, not what it points to. Memory allocated with malloc always persists until you explicitly free it. (If the only pointer to a block of malloc'ed memory is a local pointer, and if that pointer disappears, there will be no way to free that block.) In general, for every call to malloc, there should be a corresponding call to free.
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