difference between and

The <malloc.h> header is deprecated (and quite Linux specific, on which it defines non-standard functions like mallinfo(3)). Use <stdlib.h> instead if you simply need malloc(3) and related standard functions (e.g. free, calloc, realloc ….). Notice that <stdlib.h> is defined by C89 (and later) standards, but not <malloc.h>

Look into /usr/include/malloc.h you’ll find there some non-standard functions (e.g. malloc_stats(3), etc…) – in addition of malloc….

And gcc don’t link header files, but libraries. Read Levine’s book about linkers & loaders for more.

If you don’t include any headers (and dont explicitly declare malloc yourself, which would be a bad idea), malloc is implicitly declared as returning some int value (which is wrong). I do invite you to pass at least the -Wall flag to gcc when using it.

You might also pass -v to gcc to understand the actual programs involved: cc1 is the compiler proper (producing assembly code), as the assembler, ld the linker, and collect2 an internal utility which invokes the linker.

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