How/when to free this memory? (pset6/server)

Question

Here is my implementation of the indexes function in pset6:

char* indexes(const char* path)
{
    char* php = "index.php";
    char* html = "index.html";

    char* pathCopy = malloc(strlen(path) + strlen(html) + 1);
    if (pathCopy == NULL)
    {
        printf("Could not check index - insufficient memory\n");
        return NULL;
    }

    strcpy(pathCopy, path);
    strcat(pathCopy, php);
    if (access(pathCopy, F_OK) != -1)
        return pathCopy;

    strcpy(pathCopy, path);
    strcat(pathCopy, html);
    if (access(pathCopy, F_OK) != -1)
        return pathCopy;

    return NULL;
}

I'm struggling with how to free the memory allocated for pathCopy. I need to return the pointer to main, so it seems I can't call free within indexes. But every place I've tried to insert a free call in main (onto the value "index", which is how indexes returns it), it either does nothing at all or breaks the functionality of indexes. Valgrind returns the same single leak no matter what.

Am I barking up the wrong tree? Is there something simple I'm missing? Everything else in the file is working smoothly, both locally and as per check50.

Answer 1

Does valgrind return the leak if it finds index.html or index.php? I would predict this indexes would leak memory only if neither of those files is "found". Generally speaking, one would not change anything about "main" for this assignment, so adding a free to main is not the right approach. Since the memory for pathCopy is allocated in the indexes function, it needs to be free'd in the indexes function. But when? When you do not return a pointer to that allocated memory to main.