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Date:      Mon, 13 Jun 2005 23:16:49 +0200
From:      des@des.no (=?iso-8859-1?q?Dag-Erling_Sm=F8rgrav?=)
To:        Mike Hunter <mhunter@ack.berkeley.edu>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: unitialized memory is all zeros...why not garbage instead?
Message-ID:  <868y1eufcu.fsf@xps.des.no>
In-Reply-To: <20050613193150.GA75218@malcolm.berkeley.edu> (Mike Hunter's message of "Mon, 13 Jun 2005 12:31:50 -0700")
References:  <20050610224058.GA11336@malcolm.berkeley.edu> <86vf4lb110.fsf@xps.des.no> <20050613193150.GA75218@malcolm.berkeley.edu>

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Mike Hunter <mhunter@ack.berkeley.edu> writes:
> Is the pre-zeroing of malloc'd memory documented somewhere?  By my reading
> of the malloc manapge...

malloc() does not pre-zero memory, but it hands you memory which has
been pre-zeroed by the kernel unless you've used it before.  Your test
program makes only one malloc() call, so you get memory that has never
been used before.

> ...it seems like it's saying that malloc (as opposed to calloc) is NOT
> pre-zeroed.  Is there a different document I should be reading?

No, but nowhere in the standard does it say that memory allocated with
malloc() must contain non-zero garbage.  If that is what you want,
though, read the TUNING section in the malloc(3) man page.

DES
--=20
Dag-Erling Sm=F8rgrav - des@des.no




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