The difference between new/delete and mallco/free and in what case do we use malloc vs new ?

What is the difference between new/delete and malloc/free?

new/delete

• Allocate/release memory
  1. Memory allocated from 'Free Store'
  2. Returns a fully typed pointer.
  3. new (standard version) never returns a NULL (will throw on failure)
  4. Are called with Type-ID (compiler calculates the size)
  5. Has a version explicitly to handle arrays.
  6. Reallocating (to get more space) not handled intuitively (because of copy constructor).
  7. Whether they call malloc/free is implementation defined.
  8. Can add a new memory allocator to deal with low memory (set_new_handler)
  9. operator new/delete can be overridden legally
  10. constructor/destructor used to initialize/destroy the object

malloc/free

• Allocates/release memory
  1. Memory allocated from 'Heap'
  2. Returns a void*
  3. Returns NULL on failure
  4. Must specify the size required in bytes.
  5. Allocating array requires manual calculation of space.
  6. Reallocating larger chunk of memory simple (No copy constructor to worry about)
  7. They will NOT call new/delete
  8. No way to splice user code into the allocation sequence to help with low memory.
  9. malloc/free can NOT be overridden legally

Technically memory allocated by new comes from the 'Free Store' while memory allocated by malloc comes from the 'Heap'. Whether these two areas are the same is an implementation details, which is another reason that malloc and new can not be mixed.

 

In what cases do I use malloc vs new?

Unless you are forced to use C, you should never use malloc. Always use new. If you need a big chunk of data just do something like:

char *pBuffer = new char[1024];

Be careful though this is not correct:

//This is incorrect - may delete only one element, may corrupt the heap, or worse...
delete pBuffer;

Instead you should do this when deleting an array of data:

//This deletes all items in the array
delete[] pBuffer;

The new keyword is the C++ way of doing it, and it will ensure that your type will have theirconstructor called. The new keyword is also more type safe whereas malloc is not typesafe at all.

The only way I could think that would be beneficial to use malloc would be if you needed to change the size of your buffer of data. The new keyword does not have an analogous way like realloc. The realloc function might be able to extend the size of a chunk of memory for you more efficiently.

It is worth mentioning that you cannot mix new/free and malloc/delete.

Note, some answers in this question are invalid.

int* p_scalar = new int(5);//Does not create 5 elements, but initializes to 5
int* p_array = new int[5];//Creates 5 elements