initialization of arrays while operating with mallocs - arrays

Question

Given the following piece of code, I don't understand why do we have to initialize every single row of the matrix when we have already created enough space in the stack.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
main() {
int **w;
int i, j;
int m, n;
printf("Number of rows in the matrix: ");
scanf("%d", &m);
printf("Number of columns in the matrix: ");
scanf("%d", &n);
w = (int **)malloc(m * n * sizeof(int));
for (i = 0; i < m; i++)
w[i] = (int *)malloc(n * sizeof(int));
for (i = 0; i < m; i++)
for (j = 0; j < n; j++) {
printf("Element [%d][%d]: ", i + 1, j + 1);
scanf("%d", &w[i][j]);
}
for (i = 0; i < m; i++)
for (j = 0; j < n; j++)
printf("Element [%d][%d]: %d\n", i + 1, j + 1, w[i][j]);
}

Answer 1

There are many issues in your code:
space is not allocated on the stack, but from the heap.
in both cases, memory allocated for the objects is uninitialized, which means it is not initialized to anything in particular and can have any value whatsoever. Relying on any particular contents is undefined behavior.
the matrix dimensions and all the matrix elements are read from standard input with scanf(). Yet you do not check for scanf() failure to convert integers from the characters read from stdin, so any invalid or missing input is going to cause undefined behavior at some point in the program.
your matrix is actually structured as an array of pointers to arrays of int, which is fine, but inconsistent with the size arguments used to allocate the first array: w = (int **)malloc(m * n * sizeof(int)); should be
w = malloc(m * sizeof(*w));
you could easily get objects pre-initialized to 0 by using calloc() instead of malloc():
for (i = 0; i < m; i++)
w[i] = calloc(n, sizeof(int));
you should also check for malloc() failure and exit with an appropriate diagnostic message.
main() is an obsolete prototype for the main function. You should either use int main(), int main(void) or int main(int argc, char *argv[])...
Here is a modified version:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int get_int(void) {
int n;
if (scanf("%d", &n) != 1) {
printf("invalid input\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
return n;
}
void xalloc(size_t size) {
void *p = calloc(size, 1);
if (p == NULL) {
printf("out of memory for %zu bytes\n", size);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
return p;
}
int main() {
int **w;
int i, j;
int m, n;
printf("Number of rows in the matrix: ");
m = get_int();
printf("Number of columns in the matrix: ");
n = get_int();
w = xalloc(m * sizeof(*w));
for (i = 0; i < m; i++) {
w[i] = xalloc(n * sizeof(int));
}
for (i = 0; i < m; i++) {
for (j = 0; j < n; j++) {
printf("Element [%d][%d]: ", i + 1, j + 1);
w[i][j] = get_int();
}
}
for (i = 0; i < m; i++) {
for (j = 0; j < n; j++) {
printf("Element [%d][%d]: %d\n", i + 1, j + 1, w[i][j]);
}
}
for (i = 0; i < m; i++) {
free(w[i]);
}
free(w);
return 0;
}