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Diffstat (limited to 'manual/memory.texi')
| -rw-r--r-- | manual/memory.texi | 14 |
1 files changed, 14 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/manual/memory.texi b/manual/memory.texi index 4e42b47add..09147bcd14 100644 --- a/manual/memory.texi +++ b/manual/memory.texi @@ -611,6 +611,20 @@ The block was already freed. @end table @end deftp +Another possibility to check for and guard against bugs in the use of +@code{malloc}, @code{realloc} and @code{free} is to set the environment +variable @code{MALLOC_CHECK_}. When @code{MALLOC_CHECK_} is set, a +special (less efficient) implementation is used which is designed to be +tolerant against simple errors, such as double calls of @code{free} with +the same argument, or overruns of a single byte (off-by-one bugs). Not +all such errors can be proteced against, however, and memory leaks can +result. If @code{MALLOC_CHECK_} is set to @code{0}, any detected heap +corruption is silently ignored; if set to @code{1}, a diagnostic is +printed on @code{stderr}; if set to @code{2}, @code{abort} is called +immediately. This can be useful because otherwise a crash may happen +much later, and the true cause for the problem is then very hard to +track down. + @node Hooks for Malloc @subsection Storage Allocation Hooks @cindex allocation hooks, for @code{malloc} |