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Dear all,
If a C program malloc'ed some memory, but somehow exited without calling free(), will the malloc'ed memory be freed by the OS automatically?
If the answer is no, then does it means after running that program for a number of times, the OS will run out of memory?
TIA,
Michael
On exit OS cleansup everything.
> On exit OS cleansup everything.
But I think he means, running the program without exiting the other instance...
Actually in a modenr OS (like Linux), you can limit the amount of memory each user can use. So, you can prevent your system runnig out of memory by setting such a limit.
On the other hand, if you don't have a limit, yes it is possible to get out of memory because when the process requests some dynamic memory from the OS, OS allocates memory from the process' address space. If the process' address space cannot handle more memory allocation request, memory manager request some more memory from the OS kernel. And if the system has enough memory, it is allocated for the process (the process address space is extended).
Thanks for the quick responses! I am talking about the program exited, no other instance running.
I asked this question as I am new to C, and I cannot find document/guides that tell me on exit the OS will free all alloc'ed memory.
@fnoyan : Yes ur right. But at any case an instance or a process exits OS cleansup it process space.
So the answer to questionanswer should be yes.Quote:
If a C program malloc'ed some memory, but somehow exited without calling free(), will the malloc'ed memory be freed by the OS automatically?
what say u?
Yes, for a modern OS. Since there is no more any process descriptor for the process, no resources can be hold by the OS on behalf of the process.
But you may want to read this thread
http://cboard.cprogramming.com/showthread.php?t=76877
Thank God (of the C) and everybody! Now I know what to do.