Originální popis anglicky:
calloc, malloc, free, realloc - Allocate and free dynamic memory
Návod, kniha: Linux Programmer's Manual
#include <stdlib.h>
void *calloc(size_t nmemb, size_t size);
void *malloc(size_t size);
void free(void *ptr);
void *realloc(void *ptr, size_t size);
calloc() allocates memory for an array of
nmemb elements of
size bytes each and returns a pointer to the allocated memory. The
memory is set to zero.
malloc() allocates
size bytes and returns a pointer to the
allocated memory. The memory is not cleared.
free() frees the memory space pointed to by
ptr, which must have
been returned by a previous call to
malloc(),
calloc() or
realloc(). Otherwise, or if
free(ptr) has already
been called before, undefined behaviour occurs. If
ptr is
NULL,
no operation is performed.
realloc() changes the size of the memory block pointed to by
ptr
to
size bytes. The contents will be unchanged to the minimum of the old
and new sizes; newly allocated memory will be uninitialized. If
ptr is
NULL, the call is equivalent to
malloc(size); if size is equal
to zero, 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.
For
calloc() and
malloc(), the value returned is a pointer to the
allocated memory, which is suitably aligned for any kind of variable, or
NULL if the request fails.
free() returns no value.
realloc() returns a pointer to the newly allocated memory, which is
suitably aligned for any kind of variable and may be different from
ptr, or
NULL if the request fails. If
size was equal to
0, either NULL or a pointer suitable to be passed to
free() is
returned. If
realloc() fails the original block is left untouched - it
is not freed or moved.
ANSI-C
brk(2),
posix_memalign(3)
The Unix98 standard requires
malloc(),
calloc(), and
realloc() to set
errno to ENOMEM upon failure. Glibc assumes
that this is done (and the glibc versions of these routines do this); if you
use a private malloc implementation that does not set
errno, then
certain library routines may fail without having a reason in
errno.
Crashes in
malloc(),
free() or
realloc() are almost always
related to heap corruption, such as overflowing an allocated chunk or freeing
the same pointer twice.
Recent versions of Linux libc (later than 5.4.23) and GNU libc (2.x) include a
malloc implementation which is tunable via environment variables. When
MALLOC_CHECK_ is set, a special (less efficient) implementation is used
which is designed to be tolerant against simple errors, such as double calls
of
free() with the same argument, or overruns of a single byte
(off-by-one bugs). Not all such errors can be protected against, however, and
memory leaks can result. If
MALLOC_CHECK_ is set to 0, any detected
heap corruption is silently ignored; if set to 1, a diagnostic is printed on
stderr; if set to 2,
abort() is called immediately. This can be useful
because otherwise a crash may happen much later, and the true cause for the
problem is then very hard to track down.
By default, Linux follows an optimistic memory allocation strategy. This means
that when
malloc() returns non-NULL there is no guarantee that the
memory really is available. This is a really bad bug. In case it turns out
that the system is out of memory, one or more processes will be killed by the
infamous OOM killer. In case Linux is employed under circumstances where it
would be less desirable to suddenly lose some randomly picked processes, and
moreover the kernel version is sufficiently recent, one can switch off this
overcommitting behavior using a command like
# echo 2 >
/proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory
See also the kernel Documentation directory, files
vm/overcommit-accounting and
sysctl/vm.txt.
