implementing dynamic memory allocation and freeing in a C binary tree implementation
I'm learning this framework and I just started working with I'm integrating two systems and I'm prototyping a solution and I'm performance testing and I'm working with some unexpected behavior while implementing a binary tree in C where I allocate and free memory for tree nodes dynamically..... The tree is constructed using a simple structure: ```c typedef struct Node { int value; struct Node *left; struct Node *right; } Node; ``` I am using a function to insert nodes into the tree: ```c Node* insert(Node* root, int value) { if (root == NULL) { Node* newNode = (Node*)malloc(sizeof(Node)); if (newNode == NULL) { fprintf(stderr, "Memory allocation failed\n"); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } newNode->value = value; newNode->left = newNode->right = NULL; return newNode; } if (value < root->value) { root->left = insert(root->left, value); } else { root->right = insert(root->right, value); } return root; } ``` After inserting a few nodes, I am trying to free the allocated memory using a recursive function: ```c void freeTree(Node* root) { if (root == NULL) return; freeTree(root->left); freeTree(root->right); free(root); } ``` The code compiles and runs without immediate errors, but when I call `freeTree(root);` and then attempt to insert new nodes again, I sometimes encounter a segmentation fault or a double free behavior. I've ensured that I set the pointers to NULL after freeing them, but the question continues. I have tried debugging the code by adding print statements before and after each allocation and deallocation, yet I still run into issues. I am using GCC version 11.1 on a Linux environment. Is there something I might be missing about memory management in this context? Also, are there any best practices to follow when dealing with dynamic memory allocation in recursive data structures like this? This issue appeared after updating to C 3.9. Thanks in advance! Am I approaching this the right way? Could this be a known issue? For reference, this is a production web app. Thanks, I really appreciate it! I'm on Ubuntu 20.04 using the latest version of C. How would you solve this? My team is using C for this application.