There are times when it’s necessary to have a pointer that doesn’t point to anything. The macro NULL, defined in , has a value that’s guaranteed to be different from any valid pointer. NULL is a literal zero, possibly cast to void* or char*.

Some people, notably C++ programmers, prefer to use 0 rather than NULL. 
The null pointer is used in three ways:
1) To stop indirection in a recursive data structure.
2) As an error value.
3) As a sentinel value.

calloc(...) allocates a block of memory for an array of elements of a certain size. By default the block is initialized to 0. The total number of memory allocated will be (number_of_elements * size).

malloc(...) takes in only a single argument which is the memory required in bytes. malloc(...) allocated bytes of memory and not blocks of memory like calloc(...).

malloc(...) allocates memory blocks and returns a void pointer to the allocated space, or NULL if there is insufficient memory available.

calloc(...) allocates an array in memory with elements initialized to 0 and returns a pointer to the allocated space. calloc(...) calls malloc(...) in order to use the C++ _set_new_mode function to set the new handler mode.

sprintf() writes data to the character array whereas printf(...) writes data to the standard output device.

Size of the final executable can be reduced using dynamic linking for libraries.

a[i] == *(a+i)
a[i][j] == *(*(a+i)+j)
a[i][j][k] == *(*(*(a+i)+j)+k)
a[i][j][k][l] == *(*(*(*(a+i)+j)+k)+l)