What is the exact purpose of length padding in Merkle–Damgård hash functions?

Question

Is a length padding technique in a hash function used to avoid length extension attacks ?

Answer 1

Hash functions are defined to work on an arbitrary integer number of blocks. The minimal quantity of data that can be processed by an hash function is a single block.

So, if the message size is not an integer multiple of the block size one has to pad it to the right size.

One needs also to make the message + padding have one and one only interpretation, otherwise it would be simple to create collisions. Therefore adding the padding lenght gives an unique way to interprete the message+padding couple.

As example: let's imagine that one pads addings just zeros to achieve the right lenght. Therefore message $m$ and message $m||0$ have the same hash image.