free()

[Michael J. Schmelzer]

In article <27780 at cca.CCA.COM> g-rh at CCA.CCA.COM.UUCP (Richard Harter) writes:

>	Er, I hope that 'compiler' was a slip.  In case it wasn't, the
It was. Forgive my lack of precision. I meant 'library' or something.

>	Free and malloc are implementation dependent -- they are 
>independent library routines.  The quality of implementations vary.
>There are a lot of rather cheesy implementations out there. 
So I shouldn't make any assumptions, in other words. 
That's exactly what I wanted to know. I mean, nobody actually
uses K&R's source code for their implementation, do they?

>allocators keep track of every block allocated and check whether an
>address passed to it via free is actually an allocated block.  In a
>lot of implementations the control information for the block is placed
>just before the block
So in other words, my free() routine has a lot more info than just
an address, right?

Thanks again, everyone!
My adviser calls me a "C wizard," let's just not tell him the truth,
OK?
-- 
"Sum Iuppiter Optimus Maximus!!"- My Latin teacher who flipped. 
"Worthlessness is the root of all worthlessness." -WPRB music dept.
Mike Schmelzer mjschmel at phoenix!princeton.edu
DISLAIMER:If you think I speak for anyone but myself, you must be a lawyer.