Ctrl-C of functions that allocated mem
On Wed, Jun 08, 2011 at 08:40:21PM -0400, Simon Urbanek wrote:
On Jun 8, 2011, at 8:06 PM, oliver wrote:
Hello, what happens, when a function (R-extension in C), that allocated memory (strdup(), malloc()/calloc() and so on), and is used in interactive mode, then will be stopped via Ctrl-C? I would assume that there remains allocated memory, which is not usable and also not accessable (hence no way to free it). Are there any mechanisms in R that could help in rolling back the allocation?
Yes, if you read R-exts: http://r.research.att.com/man/R-exts.html#Memory-allocation you would know that you're not supposed to use malloc/calloc at all and if you allow interruption ("regular" C code does not) R_alloc does what you asked about.
[...] In the printed (pdf) version of R-exts I found that R_alloc() and S_alloc() and some other functions from section 6.1.1 have return type char*. This seesm to be a relict from the K&R era, because since ANSI C void* is the type for generic pointers. will it be changed in the future, so that R_alloc() will be void* R_alloc() one day? Ciao, Oliver