It's faster to realloc down, and might be faster to realloc up if there's room to grow in place. Otherwise, it translates to a malloc/copy/free.

The realloc() function changes the size of the memory block pointed to by ptr to size bytes. The contents will be unchanged in the range from the start of the region up to the minimum of the old and new sizes. If the new size is larger than the old size, the added memory will not be initialized. If ptr is NULL, then the call is equivalent to malloc(size), for all values of size; if size is equal to zero, and ptr is not NULL, then the call is equivalent to free(ptr). Unless ptr is NULL, it must have been returned by an earlier call to malloc(), calloc() or realloc(). If the area pointed to was moved, a free(ptr) is done.

The memmove() function copies n bytes from memory area src to memory area dest. The memory areas may overlap: copying takes place as though the bytes in src are first copied into a temporary array that does not overlap src or dest, and the bytes are then copied from the temporary array to dest.