Member-only story
Mastering Large Data Structures in C: Best Practices for Safe and Efficient Handling Without Direct Returns
5 min readJun 19, 2025
Table of Contents
- Why Not Return Large Data Structures?
- Understanding Stack vs Heap in C
- Using Pointers: Pass by Reference
- Output Parameters Instead of Return Values
- Dynamic Memory Allocation (
malloc,calloc,realloc) - Returning Pointers From Functions
- Encapsulating Data With Opaque Structures
- Modular Design and
typedef - Memory Ownership and Cleanup
- Code Example: Matrix Multiplication
- Error Handling: Null Checks and Validation
- Object Pooling for Reuse
- Thread-Safety in Multi-threaded Environments
- Use Case 2: Large Binary Tree Traversal
- Use Case 3: Image Processing in C
- Comparison With C++: What’s Missing in C
- Cheat Sheet Summary
- Final Recommendations
