Ah, now I got it. This a bit strange concept. Under normal circumstances you'd allocate memory for the string when the memory for the struct is allocated as well and you'd release it when the struct memory is released.

The more different parts in your code allocate and release memory on different occasions, the more error prone the code will be concerning memory leaks and or relese of already released memory blocks.

well, for first_struct i am doing exactly that - allocating the struct and the strings at the same time and then releasing them at the same time, at least in the second version. Not releasing the strings when i released the struct was what i disliked about the first version. First_save is different though, its supposed to be a permanently allocated area of memory (permanent for the duration of the run-time anyways.) The reason for that is because if I allocate first_save, call add_struct(first_save,sizeof(save_struct)), and then later release first_save ... well i believe that would cause an engine crash when game_save tries to save an invalid area of memory right?