ul with malloc

[COKEDUDE]

In this example in the malloc() what does the UL do?

#include <stdio.h>        /* perror */
#include <errno.h>        /* errno */
#include <stdlib.h>       /* malloc, free, exit */

int main(void)
{

    /* Pointer to char, requesting dynamic allocation of 2,000,000,000
     * storage elements (declared as an integer constant of type
     * unsigned long int). (If your system has less than 2 GB of memory
     * available, then this call to malloc will fail.)
     */
    char *ptr = malloc(2000000000UL);

    if (ptr == NULL) {
        perror("malloc failed");
        /* here you might want to exit the program or compensate
           for that you don't have 2GB available
         */
    } else {
        /* The rest of the code hereafter can assume that 2,000,000,000
         * chars were successfully allocated... 
         */
        free(ptr);
    }

    exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); /* exiting program */
}

[deceptikon]

The comment tells you: "declared as an integer constant of type unsigned long int". The UL suffix explicitly tells the compiler that you want a value of type unsigned long.

[Soft_1]

malloc.html file available in web.