What is wrong in the attached code sorting an array of strings using pointers

Question

https://code.sololearn.com/c37Ix0HZjmPe/?ref=app

Answer 1

The primary problem is that it is attempting to free an unallocated pointer, &names. It should free each of the pointers contained within names[].

Secondary, the print loop index goes out of bounds if list < 5.

To solve both problems change from:
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
printf("%s\n", names[i]);
free(names);

To:
for (int i = 0; i < list; i++) {
printf("%s\n", names[i]);
free(names[i]);
}

I strongly recommend cleaning up the formatting of braces and indentation.

Note: compareStr() could be directly replaced with the string library function strcmp().

Answer 2

thank you
it worked

Answer 3

Line 28
For loop condition should be
i < list

Then remove line 30
free(names)

Answer 4

why shouldn't we use free as we are allocating memomory using malloc