Is heap fragmented

Question

In a loop I allocate some memory at the beginning (probably up to 2-3k on a Linux ARM), work on it and then deallocate it. Since the loop has many iterations, I am wondering if such allocation/deallocation will fragment the heap so a subsequent "malloc" will fail.

The pseudo-code looks like this:

...
while(...){
 list=malloc(N);
 // do some work with list
 free(list);
}

Answer 1

No, that's perfectly fine. Also heap fragmentation starts to be an issue after many more allocations - of different sizes. Also, if you are still worried, just use alloca on the stack for allocations like in your loop.