/* This is a version (aka dlmalloc) of malloc/free/realloc written by Doug Lea and released to the public domain, as explained at http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ Send questions, comments, complaints, performance data, etc to dl@cs.oswego.edu* Version 2.8.6 Wed Aug 29 06:57:58 2012 Doug Lea Note: There may be an updated version of this malloc obtainable at ftp://gee.cs.oswego.edu/pub/misc/malloc.c Check before installing! *//* * PackageLicenseDeclared: CC0-1.0 */ /* This is a version (aka dlmalloc) of malloc/free/realloc written by Doug Lea and released to the public domain, as explained at http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ Send questions, comments, complaints, performance data, etc to dl@cs.oswego.edu * Version 2.8.6 Wed Aug 29 06:57:58 2012 Doug Lea Note: There may be an updated version of this malloc obtainable at ftp://gee.cs.oswego.edu/pub/misc/malloc.c Check before installing! * Quickstart This library is all in one file to simplify the most common usage: ftp it, compile it (-O3), and link it into another program. All of the compile-time options default to reasonable values for use on most platforms. You might later want to step through various compile-time and dynamic tuning options. For convenience, an include file for code using this malloc is at: ftp://gee.cs.oswego.edu/pub/misc/malloc-2.8.6.h You don't really need this .h file unless you call functions not defined in your system include files. The .h file contains only the excerpts from this file needed for using this malloc on ANSI C/C++ systems, so long as you haven't changed compile-time options about naming and tuning parameters. If you do, then you can create your own malloc.h that does include all settings by cutting at the point indicated below. Note that you may already by default be using a C library containing a malloc that is based on some version of this malloc (for example in linux). You might still want to use the one in this file to customize settings or to avoid overheads associated with library versions. * Vital statistics: Supported pointer/usize representation: 4 or 8 bytes usize MUST be an unsigned type of the same width as pointers. (If you are using an ancient system that declares usize as a signed type, or need it to be a different width than pointers, you can use a previous release of this malloc (e.g. 2.7.2) supporting these.) Alignment: 8 bytes (minimum) This suffices for nearly all current machines and C compilers. However, you can define MALLOC_ALIGNMENT to be wider than this if necessary (up to 128bytes), at the expense of using more space. Minimum overhead per allocated chunk: 4 or 8 bytes (if 4byte sizes) 8 or 16 bytes (if 8byte sizes) Each malloced chunk has a hidden word of overhead holding size and status information, and additional cross-check word if FOOTERS is defined. Minimum allocated size: 4-byte ptrs: 16 bytes (including overhead) 8-byte ptrs: 32 bytes (including overhead) Even a request for zero bytes (i.e., malloc(0)) returns a pointer to something of the minimum allocatable size. The maximum overhead wastage (i.e., number of extra bytes allocated than were requested in malloc) is less than or equal to the minimum size, except for requests >= mmap_threshold that are serviced via mmap(), where the worst case wastage is about 32 bytes plus the remainder from a system page (the minimal mmap unit); typically 4096 or 8192 bytes. Security: static-safe; optionally more or less The "security" of malloc refers to the ability of malicious code to accentuate the effects of errors (for example, freeing space that is not currently malloc'ed or overwriting past the ends of chunks) in code that calls malloc. This malloc guarantees not to modify any memory locations below the base of heap, i.e., static variables, even in the presence of usage errors. The routines additionally detect most improper frees and reallocs. All this holds as long as the static bookkeeping for malloc itself is not corrupted by some other means. This is only one aspect of security -- these checks do not, and cannot, detect all possible programming errors. If FOOTERS is defined nonzero, then each allocated chunk carries an additional check word to verify that it was malloced from its space. These check words are the same within each execution of a program using malloc, but differ across executions, so externally crafted fake chunks cannot be freed. This improves security by rejecting frees/reallocs that could corrupt heap memory, in addition to the checks preventing writes to statics that are always on. This may further improve security at the expense of time and space overhead. (Note that FOOTERS may also be worth using with MSPACES.) By default detected errors cause the program to abort (calling "abort()"). You can override this to instead proceed past errors by defining PROCEED_ON_ERROR. In this case, a bad free has no effect, and a malloc that encounters a bad address caused by user overwrites will ignore the bad address by dropping pointers and indices to all known memory. This may be appropriate for programs that should continue if at all possible in the face of programming errors, although they may run out of memory because dropped memory is never reclaimed. If you don't like either of these options, you can define CORRUPTION_ERROR_ACTION and USAGE_ERROR_ACTION to do anything else. And if if you are sure that your program using malloc has no errors or vulnerabilities, you can define INSECURE to 1, which might (or might not) provide a small performance improvement. It is also possible to limit the maximum total allocatable space, using malloc_set_footprint_limit. This is not designed as a security feature in itself (calls to set limits are not screened or privileged), but may be useful as one aspect of a secure implementation. Thread-safety: NOT thread-safe unless USE_LOCKS defined non-zero When USE_LOCKS is defined, each public call to malloc, free, etc is surrounded with a lock. By default, this uses a plain pthread mutex, win32 critical section, or a spin-lock if if available for the platform and not disabled by setting USE_SPIN_LOCKS=0. However, if USE_RECURSIVE_LOCKS is defined, recursive versions are used instead (which are not required for base functionality but may be needed in layered extensions). Using a global lock is not especially fast, and can be a major bottleneck. It is designed only to provide minimal protection in concurrent environments, and to provide a basis for extensions. If you are using malloc in a concurrent program, consider instead using nedmalloc (http://www.nedprod.com/programs/portable/nedmalloc/) or ptmalloc (See http://www.malloc.de), which are derived from versions of this malloc. System requirements: Any combination of MORECORE and/or MMAP/MUNMAP This malloc can use unix sbrk or any emulation (invoked using the CALL_MORECORE macro) and/or mmap/munmap or any emulation (invoked using CALL_MMAP/CALL_MUNMAP) to get and release system memory. On most unix systems, it tends to work best if both MORECORE and MMAP are enabled. On Win32, it uses emulations based on VirtualAlloc. It also uses common C library functions like memset. Compliance: I believe it is compliant with the Single Unix Specification (See http://www.unix.org). Also SVID/XPG, ANSI C, and probably others as well. * Overview of algorithms This is not the fastest, most space-conserving, most portable, or most tunable malloc ever written. However it is among the fastest while also being among the most space-conserving, portable and tunable. Consistent balance across these factors results in a good general-purpose allocator for malloc-intensive programs. In most ways, this malloc is a best-fit allocator. Generally, it chooses the best-fitting existing chunk for a request, with ties broken in approximately least-recently-used order. (This strategy normally maintains low fragmentation.) However, for requests less than 256bytes, it deviates from best-fit when there is not an exactly fitting available chunk by preferring to use space adjacent to that used for the previous small request, as well as by breaking ties in approximately most-recently-used order. (These enhance locality of series of small allocations.) And for very large requests (>= 256Kb by default), it relies on system memory mapping facilities, if supported. (This helps avoid carrying around and possibly fragmenting memory used only for large chunks.) All operations (except malloc_stats and mallinfo) have execution times that are bounded by a constant factor of the number of bits in a usize, not counting any clearing in calloc or copying in realloc, or actions surrounding MORECORE and MMAP that have times proportional to the number of non-contiguous regions returned by system allocation routines, which is often just 1. In real-time applications, you can optionally suppress segment traversals using NO_SEGMENT_TRAVERSAL, which assures bounded execution even when system allocators return non-contiguous spaces, at the typical expense of carrying around more memory and increased fragmentation. The implementation is not very modular and seriously overuses macros. Perhaps someday all C compilers will do as good a job inlining modular code as can now be done by brute-force expansion, but now, enough of them seem not to. Some compilers issue a lot of warnings about code that is dead/unreachable only on some platforms, and also about intentional uses of negation on unsigned types. All known cases of each can be ignored. For a longer but out of date high-level description, see http://gee.cs.oswego.edu/dl/html/malloc.html * MSPACES If MSPACES is defined, then in addition to malloc, free, etc., this file also defines mspace_malloc, mspace_free, etc. These are versions of malloc routines that take an "mspace" argument obtained using create_mspace, to control all internal bookkeeping. If ONLY_MSPACES is defined, only these versions are compiled. So if you would like to use this allocator for only some allocations, and your system malloc for others, you can compile with ONLY_MSPACES and then do something like... static mspace mymspace = create_mspace(0,0); // for example #define mymalloc(bytes) mspace_malloc(mymspace, bytes) (Note: If you only need one instance of an mspace, you can instead use "USE_DL_PREFIX" to relabel the global malloc.) You can similarly create thread-local allocators by storing mspaces as thread-locals. For example: static __thread mspace tlms = 0; void* tlmalloc(usize bytes) { if (tlms == 0) tlms = create_mspace(0, 0); return mspace_malloc(tlms, bytes); } void tlfree(void* mem) { mspace_free(tlms, mem); } Unless FOOTERS is defined, each mspace is completely independent. You cannot allocate from one and free to another (although conformance is only weakly checked, so usage errors are not always caught). If FOOTERS is defined, then each chunk carries around a tag indicating its originating mspace, and frees are directed to their originating spaces. Normally, this requires use of locks. ------------------------- Compile-time options --------------------------- Be careful in setting #define values for numerical constants of typeusize. On some systems, literal values are not automatically extendedto usize precision unless they are explicitly casted. You can alsouse the symbolic values MAX_SIZE_T, SIZE_T_ONE, etc below. WIN32 default: defined if _WIN32 defined Defining WIN32 sets up defaults for MS environment and compilers. Otherwise defaults are for unix. Beware that there seem to be some cases where this malloc might not be a pure drop-in replacement for Win32 malloc: Random-looking failures from Win32 GDI API's (eg; SetDIBits()) may be due to bugs in some video driver implementations when pixel buffers are malloc()ed, and the region spans more than one VirtualAlloc()ed region. Because dlmalloc uses a small (64Kb) default granularity, pixel buffers may straddle virtual allocation regions more often than when using the Microsoft allocator. You can avoid this by using VirtualAlloc() and VirtualFree() for all pixel buffers rather than using malloc(). If this is not possible, recompile this malloc with a larger DEFAULT_GRANULARITY. Note: in cases where MSC and gcc (cygwin) are known to differ on WIN32, conditions use _MSC_VER to distinguish them. DLMALLOC_EXPORT default: extern Defines how public APIs are declared. If you want to export via a Windows DLL, you might define this as #define DLMALLOC_EXPORT extern __declspec(dllexport) If you want a POSIX ELF shared object, you might use #define DLMALLOC_EXPORT extern __attribute__((visibility("default"))) MALLOC_ALIGNMENT default: (usize)(2 * sizeof(void *)) Controls the minimum alignment for malloc'ed chunks. It must be a power of two and at least 8, even on machines for which smaller alignments would suffice. It may be defined as larger than this though. Note however that code and data structures are optimized for the case of 8-byte alignment. MSPACES default: 0 (false) If true, compile in support for independent allocation spaces. This is only supported if HAVE_MMAP is true. ONLY_MSPACES default: 0 (false) If true, only compile in mspace versions, not regular versions. USE_LOCKS default: 0 (false) Causes each call to each public routine to be surrounded with pthread or WIN32 mutex lock/unlock. (If set true, this can be overridden on a per-mspace basis for mspace versions.) If set to a non-zero value other than 1, locks are used, but their implementation is left out, so lock functions must be supplied manually, as described below. USE_SPIN_LOCKS default: 1 iff USE_LOCKS and spin locks available If true, uses custom spin locks for locking. This is currently supported only gcc >= 4.1, older gccs on x86 platforms, and recent MS compilers. Otherwise, posix locks or win32 critical sections are used. USE_RECURSIVE_LOCKS default: not defined If defined nonzero, uses recursive (aka reentrant) locks, otherwise uses plain mutexes. This is not required for malloc proper, but may be needed for layered allocators such as nedmalloc. LOCK_AT_FORK default: not defined If defined nonzero, performs pthread_atfork upon initialization to initialize child lock while holding parent lock. The implementation assumes that pthread locks (not custom locks) are being used. In other cases, you may need to customize the implementation. FOOTERS default: 0 If true, provide extra checking and dispatching by placing information in the footers of allocated chunks. This adds space and time overhead. INSECURE default: 0 If true, omit checks for usage errors and heap space overwrites. USE_DL_PREFIX default: NOT defined Causes compiler to prefix all public routines with the string 'dl'. This can be useful when you only want to use this malloc in one part of a program, using your regular system malloc elsewhere. MALLOC_INSPECT_ALL default: NOT defined If defined, compiles malloc_inspect_all and mspace_inspect_all, that perform traversal of all heap space. Unless access to these functions is otherwise restricted, you probably do not want to include them in secure implementations. ABORT default: defined as abort() Defines how to abort on failed checks. On most systems, a failed check cannot die with an "assert" or even print an informative message, because the underlying print routines in turn call malloc, which will fail again. Generally, the best policy is to simply call abort(). It's not very useful to do more than this because many errors due to overwriting will show up as address faults (null, odd addresses etc) rather than malloc-triggered checks, so will also abort. Also, most compilers know that abort() does not return, so can better optimize code conditionally calling it. PROCEED_ON_ERROR default: defined as 0 (false) Controls whether detected bad addresses cause them to bypassed rather than aborting. If set, detected bad arguments to free and realloc are ignored. And all bookkeeping information is zeroed out upon a detected overwrite of freed heap space, thus losing the ability to ever return it from malloc again, but enabling the application to proceed. If PROCEED_ON_ERROR is defined, the static variable malloc_corruption_error_count is compiled in and can be examined to see if errors have occurred. This option generates slower code than the default abort policy. DEBUG default: NOT defined The DEBUG setting is mainly intended for people trying to modify this code or diagnose problems when porting to new platforms. However, it may also be able to better isolate user errors than just using runtime checks. The assertions in the check routines spell out in more detail the assumptions and invariants underlying the algorithms. The checking is fairly extensive, and will slow down execution noticeably. Calling malloc_stats or mallinfo with DEBUG set will attempt to check every non-mmapped allocated and free chunk in the course of computing the summaries. ABORT_ON_ASSERT_FAILURE default: defined as 1 (true) Debugging assertion failures can be nearly impossible if your version of the assert macro causes malloc to be called, which will lead to a cascade of further failures, blowing the runtime stack. ABORT_ON_ASSERT_FAILURE cause assertions failures to call abort(), which will usually make debugging easier. MALLOC_FAILURE_ACTION default: sets errno to ENOMEM, or no-op on win32 The action to take before "return 0" when malloc fails to be able to return memory because there is none available. HAVE_MORECORE default: 1 (true) unless win32 or ONLY_MSPACES True if this system supports sbrk or an emulation of it. MORECORE default: sbrk The name of the sbrk-style system routine to call to obtain more memory. See below for guidance on writing custom MORECORE functions. The type of the argument to sbrk/MORECORE varies across systems. It cannot be usize, because it supports negative arguments, so it is normally the signed type of the same width as usize (sometimes declared as "intptr"). It doesn't much matter though. Internally, we only call it with arguments less than half the max value of a usize, which should work across all reasonable possibilities, although sometimes generating compiler warnings. MORECORE_CONTIGUOUS default: 1 (true) if HAVE_MORECORE If true, take advantage of fact that consecutive calls to MORECORE with positive arguments always return contiguous increasing addresses. This is true of unix sbrk. It does not hurt too much to set it true anyway, since malloc copes with non-contiguities. Setting it false when definitely non-contiguous saves time and possibly wasted space it would take to discover this though. MORECORE_CANNOT_TRIM default: NOT defined True if MORECORE cannot release space back to the system when given negative arguments. This is generally necessary only if you are using a hand-crafted MORECORE function that cannot handle negative arguments. NO_SEGMENT_TRAVERSAL default: 0 If non-zero, suppresses traversals of memory segments returned by either MORECORE or CALL_MMAP. This disables merging of segments that are contiguous, and selectively releasing them to the OS if unused, but bounds execution times. HAVE_MMAP default: 1 (true) True if this system supports mmap or an emulation of it. If so, and HAVE_MORECORE is not true, MMAP is used for all system allocation. If set and HAVE_MORECORE is true as well, MMAP is primarily used to directly allocate very large blocks. It is also used as a backup strategy in cases where MORECORE fails to provide space from system. Note: A single call to MUNMAP is assumed to be able to unmap memory that may have be allocated using multiple calls to MMAP, so long as they are adjacent. HAVE_MREMAP default: 1 on linux, else 0 If true realloc() uses mremap() to re-allocate large blocks and extend or shrink allocation spaces. MMAP_CLEARS default: 1 except on WINCE. True if mmap clears memory so calloc doesn't need to. This is true for standard unix mmap using /dev/zero and on WIN32 except for WINCE. USE_BUILTIN_FFS default: 0 (i.e., not used) Causes malloc to use the builtin ffs() function to compute indices. Some compilers may recognize and intrinsify ffs to be faster than the supplied C version. Also, the case of x86 using gcc is special-cased to an asm instruction, so is already as fast as it can be, and so this setting has no effect. Similarly for Win32 under recent MS compilers. (On most x86s, the asm version is only slightly faster than the C version.) malloc_getpagesize default: derive from system includes, or 4096. The system page size. To the extent possible, this malloc manages memory from the system in page-size units. This may be (and usually is) a function rather than a constant. This is ignored if WIN32, where page size is determined using getSystemInfo during initialization. USE_DEV_RANDOM default: 0 (i.e., not used) Causes malloc to use /dev/random to initialize secure magic seed for stamping footers. Otherwise, the current time is used. NO_MALLINFO default: 0 If defined, don't compile "mallinfo". This can be a simple way of dealing with mismatches between system declarations and those in this file. MALLINFO_FIELD_TYPE default: usize The type of the fields in the mallinfo struct. This was originally defined as "int" in SVID etc, but is more usefully defined as usize. The value is used only if HAVE_USR_INCLUDE_MALLOC_H is not set NO_MALLOC_STATS default: 0 If defined, don't compile "malloc_stats". This avoids calls to fprintf and bringing in stdio dependencies you might not want. REALLOC_ZERO_BYTES_FREES default: not defined This should be set if a call to realloc with zero bytes should be the same as a call to free. Some people think it should. Otherwise, since this malloc returns a unique pointer for malloc(0), so does realloc(p, 0). LACKS_UNISTD_H, LACKS_FCNTL_H, LACKS_SYS_PARAM_H, LACKS_SYS_MMAN_HLACKS_STRINGS_H, LACKS_STRING_H, LACKS_SYS_TYPES_H, LACKS_ERRNO_HLACKS_STDLIB_H LACKS_SCHED_H LACKS_TIME_H default: NOT defined unless on WIN32 Define these if your system does not have these header files. You might need to manually insert some of the declarations they provide. DEFAULT_GRANULARITY default: page size if MORECORE_CONTIGUOUS, system_info.dwAllocationGranularity in WIN32, otherwise 64K. Also settable using mallopt(M_GRANULARITY, x) The unit for allocating and deallocating memory from the system. On most systems with contiguous MORECORE, there is no reason to make this more than a page. However, systems with MMAP tend to either require or encourage larger granularities. You can increase this value to prevent system allocation functions to be called so often, especially if they are slow. The value must be at least one page and must be a power of two. Setting to 0 causes initialization to either page size or win32 region size. (Note: In previous versions of malloc, the equivalent of this option was called "TOP_PAD") DEFAULT_TRIM_THRESHOLD default: 2MB Also settable using mallopt(M_TRIM_THRESHOLD, x) The maximum amount of unused top-most memory to keep before releasing via malloc_trim in free(). Automatic trimming is mainly useful in long-lived programs using contiguous MORECORE. Because trimming via sbrk can be slow on some systems, and can sometimes be wasteful (in cases where programs immediately afterward allocate more large chunks) the value should be high enough so that your overall system performance would improve by releasing this much memory. As a rough guide, you might set to a value close to the average size of a process (program) running on your system. Releasing this much memory would allow such a process to run in memory. Generally, it is worth tuning trim thresholds when a program undergoes phases where several large chunks are allocated and released in ways that can reuse each other's storage, perhaps mixed with phases where there are no such chunks at all. The trim value must be greater than page size to have any useful effect. To disable trimming completely, you can set to MAX_SIZE_T. Note that the trick some people use of mallocing a huge space and then freeing it at program startup, in an attempt to reserve system memory, doesn't have the intended effect under automatic trimming, since that memory will immediately be returned to the system. DEFAULT_MMAP_THRESHOLD default: 256K Also settable using mallopt(M_MMAP_THRESHOLD, x)Lines 1–500 of 6300. Load more
/* This is a version (aka dlmalloc) of malloc/free/realloc written by Doug Lea and released to the public domain, as explained at http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ Send questions, comments, complaints, performance data, etc to dl@cs.oswego.edu * Version 2.8.6 Wed Aug 29 06:57:58 2012 Doug Lea Note: There may be an updated version of this malloc obtainable at ftp://gee.cs.oswego.edu/pub/misc/malloc.c Check before installing! */ /* * PackageLicenseDeclared: CC0-1.0 */ /* This is a version (aka dlmalloc) of malloc/free/realloc written by Doug Lea and released to the public domain, as explained at http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ Send questions, comments, complaints, performance data, etc to dl@cs.oswego.edu * Version 2.8.6 Wed Aug 29 06:57:58 2012 Doug Lea Note: There may be an updated version of this malloc obtainable at ftp://gee.cs.oswego.edu/pub/misc/malloc.c Check before installing! * Quickstart This library is all in one file to simplify the most common usage: ftp it, compile it (-O3), and link it into another program. All of the compile-time options default to reasonable values for use on most platforms. You might later want to step through various compile-time and dynamic tuning options. For convenience, an include file for code using this malloc is at: ftp://gee.cs.oswego.edu/pub/misc/malloc-2.8.6.h You don't really need this .h file unless you call functions not defined in your system include files. The .h file contains only the excerpts from this file needed for using this malloc on ANSI C/C++ systems, so long as you haven't changed compile-time options about naming and tuning parameters. If you do, then you can create your own malloc.h that does include all settings by cutting at the point indicated below. Note that you may already by default be using a C library containing a malloc that is based on some version of this malloc (for example in linux). You might still want to use the one in this file to customize settings or to avoid overheads associated with library versions. * Vital statistics: Supported pointer/usize representation: 4 or 8 bytes usize MUST be an unsigned type of the same width as pointers. (If you are using an ancient system that declares usize as a signed type, or need it to be a different width than pointers, you can use a previous release of this malloc (e.g. 2.7.2) supporting these.) Alignment: 8 bytes (minimum) This suffices for nearly all current machines and C compilers. However, you can define MALLOC_ALIGNMENT to be wider than this if necessary (up to 128bytes), at the expense of using more space. Minimum overhead per allocated chunk: 4 or 8 bytes (if 4byte sizes) 8 or 16 bytes (if 8byte sizes) Each malloced chunk has a hidden word of overhead holding size and status information, and additional cross-check word if FOOTERS is defined. Minimum allocated size: 4-byte ptrs: 16 bytes (including overhead) 8-byte ptrs: 32 bytes (including overhead) Even a request for zero bytes (i.e., malloc(0)) returns a pointer to something of the minimum allocatable size. The maximum overhead wastage (i.e., number of extra bytes allocated than were requested in malloc) is less than or equal to the minimum size, except for requests >= mmap_threshold that are serviced via mmap(), where the worst case wastage is about 32 bytes plus the remainder from a system page (the minimal mmap unit); typically 4096 or 8192 bytes. Security: static-safe; optionally more or less The "security" of malloc refers to the ability of malicious code to accentuate the effects of errors (for example, freeing space that is not currently malloc'ed or overwriting past the ends of chunks) in code that calls malloc. This malloc guarantees not to modify any memory locations below the base of heap, i.e., static variables, even in the presence of usage errors. The routines additionally detect most improper frees and reallocs. All this holds as long as the static bookkeeping for malloc itself is not corrupted by some other means. This is only one aspect of security -- these checks do not, and cannot, detect all possible programming errors. If FOOTERS is defined nonzero, then each allocated chunk carries an additional check word to verify that it was malloced from its space. These check words are the same within each execution of a program using malloc, but differ across executions, so externally crafted fake chunks cannot be freed. This improves security by rejecting frees/reallocs that could corrupt heap memory, in addition to the checks preventing writes to statics that are always on. This may further improve security at the expense of time and space overhead. (Note that FOOTERS may also be worth using with MSPACES.) By default detected errors cause the program to abort (calling "abort()"). You can override this to instead proceed past errors by defining PROCEED_ON_ERROR. In this case, a bad free has no effect, and a malloc that encounters a bad address caused by user overwrites will ignore the bad address by dropping pointers and indices to all known memory. This may be appropriate for programs that should continue if at all possible in the face of programming errors, although they may run out of memory because dropped memory is never reclaimed. If you don't like either of these options, you can define CORRUPTION_ERROR_ACTION and USAGE_ERROR_ACTION to do anything else. And if if you are sure that your program using malloc has no errors or vulnerabilities, you can define INSECURE to 1, which might (or might not) provide a small performance improvement. It is also possible to limit the maximum total allocatable space, using malloc_set_footprint_limit. This is not designed as a security feature in itself (calls to set limits are not screened or privileged), but may be useful as one aspect of a secure implementation. Thread-safety: NOT thread-safe unless USE_LOCKS defined non-zero When USE_LOCKS is defined, each public call to malloc, free, etc is surrounded with a lock. By default, this uses a plain pthread mutex, win32 critical section, or a spin-lock if if available for the platform and not disabled by setting USE_SPIN_LOCKS=0. However, if USE_RECURSIVE_LOCKS is defined, recursive versions are used instead (which are not required for base functionality but may be needed in layered extensions). Using a global lock is not especially fast, and can be a major bottleneck. It is designed only to provide minimal protection in concurrent environments, and to provide a basis for extensions. If you are using malloc in a concurrent program, consider instead using nedmalloc (http://www.nedprod.com/programs/portable/nedmalloc/) or ptmalloc (See http://www.malloc.de), which are derived from versions of this malloc. System requirements: Any combination of MORECORE and/or MMAP/MUNMAP This malloc can use unix sbrk or any emulation (invoked using the CALL_MORECORE macro) and/or mmap/munmap or any emulation (invoked using CALL_MMAP/CALL_MUNMAP) to get and release system memory. On most unix systems, it tends to work best if both MORECORE and MMAP are enabled. On Win32, it uses emulations based on VirtualAlloc. It also uses common C library functions like memset. Compliance: I believe it is compliant with the Single Unix Specification (See http://www.unix.org). Also SVID/XPG, ANSI C, and probably others as well. * Overview of algorithms This is not the fastest, most space-conserving, most portable, or most tunable malloc ever written. However it is among the fastest while also being among the most space-conserving, portable and tunable. Consistent balance across these factors results in a good general-purpose allocator for malloc-intensive programs. In most ways, this malloc is a best-fit allocator. Generally, it chooses the best-fitting existing chunk for a request, with ties broken in approximately least-recently-used order. (This strategy normally maintains low fragmentation.) However, for requests less than 256bytes, it deviates from best-fit when there is not an exactly fitting available chunk by preferring to use space adjacent to that used for the previous small request, as well as by breaking ties in approximately most-recently-used order. (These enhance locality of series of small allocations.) And for very large requests (>= 256Kb by default), it relies on system memory mapping facilities, if supported. (This helps avoid carrying around and possibly fragmenting memory used only for large chunks.) All operations (except malloc_stats and mallinfo) have execution times that are bounded by a constant factor of the number of bits in a usize, not counting any clearing in calloc or copying in realloc, or actions surrounding MORECORE and MMAP that have times proportional to the number of non-contiguous regions returned by system allocation routines, which is often just 1. In real-time applications, you can optionally suppress segment traversals using NO_SEGMENT_TRAVERSAL, which assures bounded execution even when system allocators return non-contiguous spaces, at the typical expense of carrying around more memory and increased fragmentation. The implementation is not very modular and seriously overuses macros. Perhaps someday all C compilers will do as good a job inlining modular code as can now be done by brute-force expansion, but now, enough of them seem not to. Some compilers issue a lot of warnings about code that is dead/unreachable only on some platforms, and also about intentional uses of negation on unsigned types. All known cases of each can be ignored. For a longer but out of date high-level description, see http://gee.cs.oswego.edu/dl/html/malloc.html * MSPACES If MSPACES is defined, then in addition to malloc, free, etc., this file also defines mspace_malloc, mspace_free, etc. These are versions of malloc routines that take an "mspace" argument obtained using create_mspace, to control all internal bookkeeping. If ONLY_MSPACES is defined, only these versions are compiled. So if you would like to use this allocator for only some allocations, and your system malloc for others, you can compile with ONLY_MSPACES and then do something like... static mspace mymspace = create_mspace(0,0); // for example #define mymalloc(bytes) mspace_malloc(mymspace, bytes) (Note: If you only need one instance of an mspace, you can instead use "USE_DL_PREFIX" to relabel the global malloc.) You can similarly create thread-local allocators by storing mspaces as thread-locals. For example: static __thread mspace tlms = 0; void* tlmalloc(usize bytes) { if (tlms == 0) tlms = create_mspace(0, 0); return mspace_malloc(tlms, bytes); } void tlfree(void* mem) { mspace_free(tlms, mem); } Unless FOOTERS is defined, each mspace is completely independent. You cannot allocate from one and free to another (although conformance is only weakly checked, so usage errors are not always caught). If FOOTERS is defined, then each chunk carries around a tag indicating its originating mspace, and frees are directed to their originating spaces. Normally, this requires use of locks. ------------------------- Compile-time options --------------------------- Be careful in setting #define values for numerical constants of type usize. On some systems, literal values are not automatically extended to usize precision unless they are explicitly casted. You can also use the symbolic values MAX_SIZE_T, SIZE_T_ONE, etc below. WIN32 default: defined if _WIN32 defined Defining WIN32 sets up defaults for MS environment and compilers. Otherwise defaults are for unix. Beware that there seem to be some cases where this malloc might not be a pure drop-in replacement for Win32 malloc: Random-looking failures from Win32 GDI API's (eg; SetDIBits()) may be due to bugs in some video driver implementations when pixel buffers are malloc()ed, and the region spans more than one VirtualAlloc()ed region. Because dlmalloc uses a small (64Kb) default granularity, pixel buffers may straddle virtual allocation regions more often than when using the Microsoft allocator. You can avoid this by using VirtualAlloc() and VirtualFree() for all pixel buffers rather than using malloc(). If this is not possible, recompile this malloc with a larger DEFAULT_GRANULARITY. Note: in cases where MSC and gcc (cygwin) are known to differ on WIN32, conditions use _MSC_VER to distinguish them. DLMALLOC_EXPORT default: extern Defines how public APIs are declared. If you want to export via a Windows DLL, you might define this as #define DLMALLOC_EXPORT extern __declspec(dllexport) If you want a POSIX ELF shared object, you might use #define DLMALLOC_EXPORT extern __attribute__((visibility("default"))) MALLOC_ALIGNMENT default: (usize)(2 * sizeof(void *)) Controls the minimum alignment for malloc'ed chunks. It must be a power of two and at least 8, even on machines for which smaller alignments would suffice. It may be defined as larger than this though. Note however that code and data structures are optimized for the case of 8-byte alignment. MSPACES default: 0 (false) If true, compile in support for independent allocation spaces. This is only supported if HAVE_MMAP is true. ONLY_MSPACES default: 0 (false) If true, only compile in mspace versions, not regular versions. USE_LOCKS default: 0 (false) Causes each call to each public routine to be surrounded with pthread or WIN32 mutex lock/unlock. (If set true, this can be overridden on a per-mspace basis for mspace versions.) If set to a non-zero value other than 1, locks are used, but their implementation is left out, so lock functions must be supplied manually, as described below. USE_SPIN_LOCKS default: 1 iff USE_LOCKS and spin locks available If true, uses custom spin locks for locking. This is currently supported only gcc >= 4.1, older gccs on x86 platforms, and recent MS compilers. Otherwise, posix locks or win32 critical sections are used. USE_RECURSIVE_LOCKS default: not defined If defined nonzero, uses recursive (aka reentrant) locks, otherwise uses plain mutexes. This is not required for malloc proper, but may be needed for layered allocators such as nedmalloc. LOCK_AT_FORK default: not defined If defined nonzero, performs pthread_atfork upon initialization to initialize child lock while holding parent lock. The implementation assumes that pthread locks (not custom locks) are being used. In other cases, you may need to customize the implementation. FOOTERS default: 0 If true, provide extra checking and dispatching by placing information in the footers of allocated chunks. This adds space and time overhead. INSECURE default: 0 If true, omit checks for usage errors and heap space overwrites. USE_DL_PREFIX default: NOT defined Causes compiler to prefix all public routines with the string 'dl'. This can be useful when you only want to use this malloc in one part of a program, using your regular system malloc elsewhere. MALLOC_INSPECT_ALL default: NOT defined If defined, compiles malloc_inspect_all and mspace_inspect_all, that perform traversal of all heap space. Unless access to these functions is otherwise restricted, you probably do not want to include them in secure implementations. ABORT default: defined as abort() Defines how to abort on failed checks. On most systems, a failed check cannot die with an "assert" or even print an informative message, because the underlying print routines in turn call malloc, which will fail again. Generally, the best policy is to simply call abort(). It's not very useful to do more than this because many errors due to overwriting will show up as address faults (null, odd addresses etc) rather than malloc-triggered checks, so will also abort. Also, most compilers know that abort() does not return, so can better optimize code conditionally calling it. PROCEED_ON_ERROR default: defined as 0 (false) Controls whether detected bad addresses cause them to bypassed rather than aborting. If set, detected bad arguments to free and realloc are ignored. And all bookkeeping information is zeroed out upon a detected overwrite of freed heap space, thus losing the ability to ever return it from malloc again, but enabling the application to proceed. If PROCEED_ON_ERROR is defined, the static variable malloc_corruption_error_count is compiled in and can be examined to see if errors have occurred. This option generates slower code than the default abort policy. DEBUG default: NOT defined The DEBUG setting is mainly intended for people trying to modify this code or diagnose problems when porting to new platforms. However, it may also be able to better isolate user errors than just using runtime checks. The assertions in the check routines spell out in more detail the assumptions and invariants underlying the algorithms. The checking is fairly extensive, and will slow down execution noticeably. Calling malloc_stats or mallinfo with DEBUG set will attempt to check every non-mmapped allocated and free chunk in the course of computing the summaries. ABORT_ON_ASSERT_FAILURE default: defined as 1 (true) Debugging assertion failures can be nearly impossible if your version of the assert macro causes malloc to be called, which will lead to a cascade of further failures, blowing the runtime stack. ABORT_ON_ASSERT_FAILURE cause assertions failures to call abort(), which will usually make debugging easier. MALLOC_FAILURE_ACTION default: sets errno to ENOMEM, or no-op on win32 The action to take before "return 0" when malloc fails to be able to return memory because there is none available. HAVE_MORECORE default: 1 (true) unless win32 or ONLY_MSPACES True if this system supports sbrk or an emulation of it. MORECORE default: sbrk The name of the sbrk-style system routine to call to obtain more memory. See below for guidance on writing custom MORECORE functions. The type of the argument to sbrk/MORECORE varies across systems. It cannot be usize, because it supports negative arguments, so it is normally the signed type of the same width as usize (sometimes declared as "intptr"). It doesn't much matter though. Internally, we only call it with arguments less than half the max value of a usize, which should work across all reasonable possibilities, although sometimes generating compiler warnings. MORECORE_CONTIGUOUS default: 1 (true) if HAVE_MORECORE If true, take advantage of fact that consecutive calls to MORECORE with positive arguments always return contiguous increasing addresses. This is true of unix sbrk. It does not hurt too much to set it true anyway, since malloc copes with non-contiguities. Setting it false when definitely non-contiguous saves time and possibly wasted space it would take to discover this though. MORECORE_CANNOT_TRIM default: NOT defined True if MORECORE cannot release space back to the system when given negative arguments. This is generally necessary only if you are using a hand-crafted MORECORE function that cannot handle negative arguments. NO_SEGMENT_TRAVERSAL default: 0 If non-zero, suppresses traversals of memory segments returned by either MORECORE or CALL_MMAP. This disables merging of segments that are contiguous, and selectively releasing them to the OS if unused, but bounds execution times. HAVE_MMAP default: 1 (true) True if this system supports mmap or an emulation of it. If so, and HAVE_MORECORE is not true, MMAP is used for all system allocation. If set and HAVE_MORECORE is true as well, MMAP is primarily used to directly allocate very large blocks. It is also used as a backup strategy in cases where MORECORE fails to provide space from system. Note: A single call to MUNMAP is assumed to be able to unmap memory that may have be allocated using multiple calls to MMAP, so long as they are adjacent. HAVE_MREMAP default: 1 on linux, else 0 If true realloc() uses mremap() to re-allocate large blocks and extend or shrink allocation spaces. MMAP_CLEARS default: 1 except on WINCE. True if mmap clears memory so calloc doesn't need to. This is true for standard unix mmap using /dev/zero and on WIN32 except for WINCE. USE_BUILTIN_FFS default: 0 (i.e., not used) Causes malloc to use the builtin ffs() function to compute indices. Some compilers may recognize and intrinsify ffs to be faster than the supplied C version. Also, the case of x86 using gcc is special-cased to an asm instruction, so is already as fast as it can be, and so this setting has no effect. Similarly for Win32 under recent MS compilers. (On most x86s, the asm version is only slightly faster than the C version.) malloc_getpagesize default: derive from system includes, or 4096. The system page size. To the extent possible, this malloc manages memory from the system in page-size units. This may be (and usually is) a function rather than a constant. This is ignored if WIN32, where page size is determined using getSystemInfo during initialization. USE_DEV_RANDOM default: 0 (i.e., not used) Causes malloc to use /dev/random to initialize secure magic seed for stamping footers. Otherwise, the current time is used. NO_MALLINFO default: 0 If defined, don't compile "mallinfo". This can be a simple way of dealing with mismatches between system declarations and those in this file. MALLINFO_FIELD_TYPE default: usize The type of the fields in the mallinfo struct. This was originally defined as "int" in SVID etc, but is more usefully defined as usize. The value is used only if HAVE_USR_INCLUDE_MALLOC_H is not set NO_MALLOC_STATS default: 0 If defined, don't compile "malloc_stats". This avoids calls to fprintf and bringing in stdio dependencies you might not want. REALLOC_ZERO_BYTES_FREES default: not defined This should be set if a call to realloc with zero bytes should be the same as a call to free. Some people think it should. Otherwise, since this malloc returns a unique pointer for malloc(0), so does realloc(p, 0). LACKS_UNISTD_H, LACKS_FCNTL_H, LACKS_SYS_PARAM_H, LACKS_SYS_MMAN_H LACKS_STRINGS_H, LACKS_STRING_H, LACKS_SYS_TYPES_H, LACKS_ERRNO_H LACKS_STDLIB_H LACKS_SCHED_H LACKS_TIME_H default: NOT defined unless on WIN32 Define these if your system does not have these header files. You might need to manually insert some of the declarations they provide. DEFAULT_GRANULARITY default: page size if MORECORE_CONTIGUOUS, system_info.dwAllocationGranularity in WIN32, otherwise 64K. Also settable using mallopt(M_GRANULARITY, x) The unit for allocating and deallocating memory from the system. On most systems with contiguous MORECORE, there is no reason to make this more than a page. However, systems with MMAP tend to either require or encourage larger granularities. You can increase this value to prevent system allocation functions to be called so often, especially if they are slow. The value must be at least one page and must be a power of two. Setting to 0 causes initialization to either page size or win32 region size. (Note: In previous versions of malloc, the equivalent of this option was called "TOP_PAD") DEFAULT_TRIM_THRESHOLD default: 2MB Also settable using mallopt(M_TRIM_THRESHOLD, x) The maximum amount of unused top-most memory to keep before releasing via malloc_trim in free(). Automatic trimming is mainly useful in long-lived programs using contiguous MORECORE. Because trimming via sbrk can be slow on some systems, and can sometimes be wasteful (in cases where programs immediately afterward allocate more large chunks) the value should be high enough so that your overall system performance would improve by releasing this much memory. As a rough guide, you might set to a value close to the average size of a process (program) running on your system. Releasing this much memory would allow such a process to run in memory. Generally, it is worth tuning trim thresholds when a program undergoes phases where several large chunks are allocated and released in ways that can reuse each other's storage, perhaps mixed with phases where there are no such chunks at all. The trim value must be greater than page size to have any useful effect. To disable trimming completely, you can set to MAX_SIZE_T. Note that the trick some people use of mallocing a huge space and then freeing it at program startup, in an attempt to reserve system memory, doesn't have the intended effect under automatic trimming, since that memory will immediately be returned to the system. DEFAULT_MMAP_THRESHOLD default: 256K Also settable using mallopt(M_MMAP_THRESHOLD, x)