Malloc
C dynamic memory allocation refers to performing manual memory management for dynamic memory allocation in the C programming language via a group of functions in the C standard library, namely , , , and . The C++ programming language includes these functions; however, the operators and provide similar functionality and are recommended by that language's authors. Still, there are several situations in which using new/delete is not applicable, such as garbage collection code or performance-sensitive code, and a combination of malloc and placement new may be required instead of the higher-level new operator. Many different implementations of the actual memory allocation mechanism, used by , are available. Their performance varies in both execution time and required memory. Rationale The C programming language manages memory statically, automatically, or dynamically. Static-duration variables are allocated in main memory, usually along with the executable code of th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dynamic Memory Allocation
Memory management (also dynamic memory management, dynamic storage allocation, or dynamic memory allocation) is a form of resource management applied to computer memory. The essential requirement of memory management is to provide ways to dynamically allocate portions of memory to programs at their request, and free it for reuse when no longer needed. This is critical to any advanced computer system where more than a single process might be underway at any time. Several methods have been devised that increase the effectiveness of memory management. Virtual memory systems separate the memory addresses used by a process from actual physical addresses, allowing separation of processes and increasing the size of the virtual address space beyond the available amount of RAM using paging or swapping to secondary storage. The quality of the virtual memory manager can have an extensive effect on overall system performance. The system allows a computer to appear as if it may have more ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pointer (computer Programming)
In computer science, a pointer is an object in many programming languages that stores a memory address. This can be that of another value located in computer memory, or in some cases, that of memory-mapped computer hardware. A pointer ''references'' a location in memory, and obtaining the value stored at that location is known as ''dereferencing'' the pointer. As an analogy, a page number in a book's index could be considered a pointer to the corresponding page; dereferencing such a pointer would be done by flipping to the page with the given page number and reading the text found on that page. The actual format and content of a pointer variable is dependent on the underlying computer architecture. Using pointers significantly improves performance for repetitive operations, like traversing iterable data structures (e.g. strings, lookup tables, control tables, linked lists, and tree structures). In particular, it is often much cheaper in time and space to copy and deref ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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C (programming Language)
C (''pronounced'' '' – like the letter c'') is a general-purpose programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities of the targeted Central processing unit, CPUs. It has found lasting use in operating systems code (especially in Kernel (operating system), kernels), device drivers, and protocol stacks, but its use in application software has been decreasing. C is commonly used on computer architectures that range from the largest supercomputers to the smallest microcontrollers and embedded systems. A successor to the programming language B (programming language), B, C was originally developed at Bell Labs by Ritchie between 1972 and 1973 to construct utilities running on Unix. It was applied to re-implementing the kernel of the Unix operating system. During the 1980s, C gradually gained popularity. It has become one of the most widely used programming langu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New And Delete (C++)
In the C++ programming language, and are a pair of language constructs that perform dynamic memory allocation, object construction and object destruction. Overview Except for a form called the "placement new", the operator denotes a request for memory allocation on a process's heap. If sufficient memory is available, initialises the memory, calling object constructors if necessary, and returns the address to the newly allocated and initialised memory. A request, in its simplest form, looks as follows: p = new T; where is a previously declared pointer of type (or some other type to which a pointer can be assigned, such as a superclass of ). The default constructor for , if any, is called to construct a instance in the allocated memory buffer. If not enough memory is available in the free store for an object of type , the request indicates failure by throwing an exception of type . This removes the need to explicitly check the result of an allocation. The de ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Void Pointer
In computer science, a pointer is an object (computer science), object in many programming languages that stores a memory address. This can be that of another value located in computer memory, or in some cases, that of memory-mapped I/O, memory-mapped computer hardware. A pointer ''references'' a location in memory, and obtaining the value stored at that location is known as ''dereferencing'' the pointer. As an analogy, a page number in a book's index could be considered a pointer to the corresponding page; dereferencing such a pointer would be done by flipping to the page with the given page number and reading the text found on that page. The actual format and content of a pointer variable is dependent on the underlying computer architecture. Using pointers significantly improves Computer performance, performance for repetitive operations, like traversing Collection (abstract data type)#Linear collections, iterable data Data structure, structures (e.g. String algorithms, stri ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pointer (computer Programming)
In computer science, a pointer is an object in many programming languages that stores a memory address. This can be that of another value located in computer memory, or in some cases, that of memory-mapped computer hardware. A pointer ''references'' a location in memory, and obtaining the value stored at that location is known as ''dereferencing'' the pointer. As an analogy, a page number in a book's index could be considered a pointer to the corresponding page; dereferencing such a pointer would be done by flipping to the page with the given page number and reading the text found on that page. The actual format and content of a pointer variable is dependent on the underlying computer architecture. Using pointers significantly improves performance for repetitive operations, like traversing iterable data structures (e.g. strings, lookup tables, control tables, linked lists, and tree structures). In particular, it is often much cheaper in time and space to copy and deref ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sbrk
and are basic memory management system calls used in Unix and Unix-like operating systems to control the amount of memory allocated to the heap segment of the process. These functions are typically called from a higher-level memory management library function such as . In the original Unix system, and were the only ways in which applications could acquire additional heap space; later versions allowed this to also be done using the call. Description The brk and sbrk calls dynamically change the amount of space allocated for the heap segment of the calling process. The change is made by resetting the program break of the process, which determines the maximum space that can be allocated. The program break is the address of the first location beyond the current end of the data region. The amount of available space increases as the break value increases. The available space is initialized to a value of zero, unless the break is lowered and then increased, as it may reuse the sam ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Manual Memory Management
In computer science, manual memory management refers to the usage of manual instructions by the programmer to identify and deallocate unused objects, or garbage. Up until the mid-1990s, the majority of programming languages used in industry supported manual memory management, though garbage collection has existed since 1959, when it was introduced with Lisp. Today, however, languages with garbage collection such as Java are increasingly popular and the languages Objective-C and Swift provide similar functionality through Automatic Reference Counting. The main manually managed languages still in widespread use today are C and C++ – see C dynamic memory allocation. Description Many programming languages use manual techniques to determine when to ''allocate'' a new object from the free store. C uses the malloc function; C++ and Java use the new operator; and many other languages (such as Python) allocate all objects from the free store. Determining when an object ought to be cr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Segmentation Fault
In computing, a segmentation fault (often shortened to segfault) or access violation is a Interrupt, failure condition raised by hardware with memory protection, notifying an operating system (OS) the software has attempted to access a restricted area of memory (a memory access violation). On standard x86 computers, this is a form of general protection fault. The operating system kernel (operating system), kernel will, in response, usually perform some corrective action, generally passing the fault on to the offending Process (computing), process by sending the process a signal (IPC), signal. Processes can in some cases install a custom signal handler, allowing them to recover on their own,''Expert C programming: deep C secrets'' By Peter Van der Linden, page 188 but otherwise the OS default signal handler is used, generally causing abnormal termination of the process (a program Crash (computing), crash), and sometimes a core dump. Segmentation faults are a common class of error i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Variable-length Array
In computer programming, a variable-length array (VLA), also called variable-sized or runtime-sized, is an array data structure whose length is determined at runtime, instead of at compile time. In the language C, the VLA is said to have a variably modified data type that depends on a value (see Dependent type). The main purpose of VLAs is to simplify programming of numerical algorithms. Programming languages that support VLAs include Ada, ALGOL 68 (for non-flexible rows), APL, C# (as unsafe-mode stack-allocated arrays), COBOL, Fortran 90, J, and Object Pascal (the language used in Delphi and Lazarus, that uses FPC). C99 introduced support for VLAs, although they were subsequently relegated in C11 to a conditional feature, which implementations are not required to support; on some platforms, VLAs could be implemented formerly with alloca() or similar functions. Growable arrays (also called dynamic arrays) are generally more useful than VLAs because dynamic arrays can ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Run Time (program Lifecycle Phase)
Execution in computer and software engineering is the process by which a computer or virtual machine interprets and acts on the instructions of a computer program. Each instruction of a program is a description of a particular action which must be carried out, in order for a specific problem to be solved. Execution involves repeatedly following a " fetch–decode–execute" cycle for each instruction done by the control unit. As the executing machine follows the instructions, specific effects are produced in accordance with the semantics of those instructions. Programs for a computer may be executed in a batch process without human interaction or a user may type commands in an interactive session of an interpreter. In this case, the "commands" are simply program instructions, whose execution is chained together. The term run is used almost synonymously. A related meaning of both "to run" and "to execute" refers to the specific action of a user starting (or ''launching'' o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |