Memory Leak When Using `strdup` in a Loop to Process Strings in C
I'm relatively new to this, so bear with me. I need help solving I'm working with a memory leak in my C program when using `strdup` to duplicate strings inside a loop. The program processes lines from a file, duplicates each line, and stores them in an array of pointers. However, when I run my program with tools like Valgrind, I see memory that isn't being freed, which suggests that I'm not releasing the memory allocated by `strdup`. Here's a simplified version of my code: ```c #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> #define MAX_LINES 100 #define MAX_LENGTH 256 int main() { FILE *file = fopen("input.txt", "r"); if (!file) { perror("Failed to open file"); return EXIT_FAILURE; } char *lines[MAX_LINES]; char buffer[MAX_LENGTH]; int count = 0; while (fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), file) && count < MAX_LINES) { lines[count] = strdup(buffer); // Duplicate and allocate memory if (!lines[count]) { perror("Failed to allocate memory"); fclose(file); return EXIT_FAILURE; } count++; } fclose(file); // Process lines (e.g., print them) for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) { printf("%s", lines[i]); } // Intended cleanup (but is it correct?) for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) { free(lines[i]); // Free the duplicated strings } return EXIT_SUCCESS; } ``` I've checked the code for memory deallocation and it appears correct, yet I'm still seeing memory leaks reported. I'm specifically using GCC version 11.2.0 on Ubuntu 20.04. I've also ensured that the file is closed properly after reading. What am I missing? Could it be related to how `strdup` handles memory or something else entirely? Any insights would be greatly appreciated! Am I approaching this the right way? This issue appeared after updating to C 3.10. Any ideas what could be causing this? The project is a CLI tool built with C. Am I approaching this the right way?