cu coredumps

Mark Cullen mark.cullen at dsl.pipex.com
Wed Oct 27 13:23:21 PDT 2004


Adrian Nida wrote:
That's what I thought, but I thought when you called free() it didn't
actually touch the data there, just mark it as free for other programs
to use or something?


You're right; free doesn't touch the data at that memory location.  So the
best case would be your data is still accessible.  However, you should never
expect this to be the case.

So.. it's actually pretty impossible for me to free tmp_cp anyway in
this case isn't it? The function seems to return cp as an integer, so I
can't free tmp_cp if I need cp pointing, so be able to prepend(?) /dev/
into the string?


It is possible to free tmp_cp, but it isn't going to give you the intended
effect.  If you were doing a "deep copy" (creating a place in memory for cp
and then copying the value of each item from tmp_cp to its respective place
in cp) you should free tmp_cp.  However, because you are just telling cp to
point to the same location as tmp_cp you have to remember that that area of
memory is still needed.
That makes sense, thanks :) In that case though it looks to be 
impossible for me to free the memory as the pointer gets returned, as 
already mentioned.

Now, the fact that you are returning cp as an integer when it is really a
char* raises a flag with me.  I would return the pointer, and then have the
calling function free the memory location (unless that function hands the
memory location off to something else).  However, I haven't seen the entire
code path so I don't know the intention and can't comment if this idea fits
into its view.
It's not me who's returning it :) I just noticed that it was being 
returned as an int at the end of the function. Here's a snippet of the end:

---

                        signal(SIGALRM, SIG_DFL);
                        return ((int)cp);
                }
                (void)uu_unlock(uucplock);
        }
        signal(SIGALRM, f);
        return (deadfl ? -1 : (int)cp);
}
---

The original cp is delcared as:

register char *cp;

and I have tmp_cp as:

char *tmp_cp;

Originally I tacked it onto the end of the register one, but made my own 
as just char * as I don't know what register does.

It should be alright shouldn't it?

Self memory managing can be tricky, but if you keep to these guidelines
you'll be better off:
* malloc/new only when you need it (Some OSes single-thread malloc which
cripples MP performance)
* Never assume malloc/new return what you need
* Do whatever you like to that memory location
* free the pointer when you no longer need it
* Never access that memory location again unless you are told to by malloc
I think I will write those down :) Well, copy and paste to file more like!

Adrian



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