C' s standard librarY routine for storage allocation. It takes the number of bYtes required and returns a pointer to a block of that size. Storage is allocated from a heap which lies after the end of the program and data areas. MemorY allocated with malloc must be freed explicitlY using the "free" routine before it can be re-used. gc is a storage allocator with garbage collection that is intended to be used as a plug-in replacement for malloc.