MALLOC(3)						     Linux Programmer's Manual							 MALLOC(3)

NAME

       malloc, free, calloc, realloc - allocate and free dynamic memory

SYNOPSIS

       #include <stdlib.h>

       void *malloc(size_t size);
       void free(void *ptr);
       void *calloc(size_t nmemb, size_t size);
       void *realloc(void *ptr, size_t size);

DESCRIPTION

       The  malloc()  function	allocates size bytes and returns a pointer to the allocated memory.  The memory is not initialized.  If size is 0,
       then malloc() returns either NULL, or a unique pointer value that can later be successfully passed to free().

       The free() function 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 behavior occurs.  If ptr is NULL, no operation is per-
       formed.

       The calloc() function 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.  If nmemb or size is 0, then calloc() returns either NULL, or a unique pointer value that can later be success-
       fully passed to 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 mal-
       loc(), calloc() or realloc().  If the area pointed to was moved, a free(ptr) is done.

RETURN VALUE

       The malloc() and calloc() functions return a pointer to the allocated memory that is suitably aligned for any kind of variable.	On  error,
       these  functions  return  NULL.	NULL may also be returned by a successful call to malloc() with a size of zero, or by a successful call to
       calloc() with nmemb or size equal to zero.

       The free() function returns no value.

       The realloc() function returns a pointer to the newly allocated memory, which is suitably aligned for any kind of variable and may be  dif-
       ferent  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.

CONFORMING TO

       C89, C99.

NOTES

       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.	In case it turns out that the system is out of memory, one or more processes will be killed by the
       OOM killer.  For more information, see the description of /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory and /proc/sys/vm/oom_adj in proc(5), and the Linux
       kernel source file Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting.

       Normally,  malloc() allocates memory from the heap, and adjusts the size of the heap as required, using sbrk(2).  When allocating blocks of
       memory larger than MMAP_THRESHOLD bytes, the glibc malloc() implementation allocates the  memory  as  a	private  anonymous  mapping  using
       mmap(2).   MMAP_THRESHOLD  is 128 kB by default, but is adjustable using mallopt(3).  Allocations performed using mmap(2) are unaffected by
       the RLIMIT_DATA resource limit (see getrlimit(2)).

       To avoid corruption in multithreaded applications, mutexes are used internally to protect the memory-management data structures employed by
       these  functions.   In  a multithreaded application in which threads simultaneously allocate and free memory, there could be contention for
       these mutexes.  To scalably handle memory allocation in multithreaded applications, glibc creates additional memory  allocation	arenas	if
       mutex contention is detected.  Each arena is a large region of memory that is internally allocated by the system (using brk(2) or mmap(2)),
       and managed with its own mutexes.

       The UNIX 98 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(), calloc(), realloc(), or free() 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 glibc (2.x) include a malloc() implementation which is tunable via environment vari-
       ables.  For details, see mallopt(3).

SEE ALSO

       brk(2), mmap(2), alloca(3), malloc_get_state(3), malloc_info(3), malloc_trim(3), malloc_usable_size(3), mallopt(3), mcheck(3), mtrace(3),
       posix_memalign(3)

COLOPHON

       This page is part of release 3.53 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

GNU
								    2012-05-10								 MALLOC(3)