C free(): invalid pointer

You’re attempting to free something that isn’t a pointer to a “freeable” memory address. Just because something is an address doesn’t mean that you need to or should free it.

There are two main types of memory you seem to be confusing – stack memory and heap memory.

  • Stack memory lives in the live span of the function. It’s temporary space for things that shouldn’t grow too big. When you call the function main, it sets aside some memory for your variables you’ve declared (p,token, and so on).
  • Heap memory lives from when you malloc it to when you free it. You can use much more heap memory than you can stack memory. You also need to keep track of it – it’s not easy like stack memory!

You have a few errors:

  • You’re trying to free memory that’s not heap memory. Don’t do that.
  • You’re trying to free the inside of a block of memory. When you have in fact allocated a block of memory, you can only free it from the pointer returned by malloc. That is to say, only from the beginning of the block. You can’t free a portion of the block from the inside.

For your bit of code here, you probably want to find a way to copy relevant portion of memory to somewhere else…say another block of memory you’ve set aside. Or you can modify the original string if you want (hint: char value 0 is the null terminator and tells functions like printf to stop reading the string).

EDIT: The malloc function does allocate heap memory*.

“9.9.1 The malloc and free Functions

The C standard library provides an explicit allocator known as the malloc package. Programs allocate blocks from the heap by calling the malloc function.”

~Computer Systems : A Programmer’s Perspective, 2nd Edition, Bryant & O’Hallaron, 2011

EDIT 2: * The C standard does not, in fact, specify anything about the heap or the stack. However, for anyone learning on a relevant desktop/laptop machine, the distinction is probably unnecessary and confusing if anything, especially if you’re learning about how your program is stored and executed. When you find yourself working on something like an AVR microcontroller as H2CO3 has, it is definitely worthwhile to note all the differences, which from my own experience with embedded systems, extend well past memory allocation.

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