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From: davewt@NCoast.ORG (David Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: free() in SAS C
Message-ID: <1991May6.023409.13079@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 6 May 91 02:34:09 GMT
References: <1991May02.143148.22732@edb.tih.no> <chopps.0579@ro-chp.UUCP>
Organization: North Coast Public Access Un*x (ncoast)
Lines: 23

In article <1991May02.143148.22732@edb.tih.no> karlm@epsilon.tih.no (Karl Martin Lund) writes:
>I've had some problems while using the free() function in SAS C version 5.10.
>It doesn't seem to free the memory to the system before the program exits. 
>It does, however, free the memory in a way such that the same program can use
>it again when malloc is called. Has anybody any ideas of whats's the problem,
>or is it made that way to minimize problems with memory fragmetation?
>I am doing a lot of big, temporary memory allocations which I want to free to
>the system after use. Does anyone know a way to do this in a ANSI compatible
>way?


	You really should be using the Amiga-specific calls to do this,
AllocMem() and FreeMem(). These will do what you want, and are needed if you
want to specify flags such as MEMF_CHIP, MEMF_PUBLIC, MEMF_CLEAR, etc.
the m/alloc() and free() functions are just provided for ANSI compliance and
compatibility with Unix C compilers, and will hold onto the memory until
program exit assuming you might want it again (under ANSI C you are supposed
to be able to alloc a block of memory, free it, and alloc it again without
losing the contents, and some programs make use of this, so it is required
for the SAS/C functions to work similarly).


			Dave