Menu
The best way to avoid memory leaks in C++ is to have as few new/delete calls at the program level as possible – ideally NONE. Anything that requires dynamic memory should be buried inside an RAII object that releases the memory when it goes out of scope.
Call to realloc itself does not leak memory. You should make sure that the memory for reallocated string is released with free after it's not needed any more.
DEFINITION A memory leak is the gradual deterioration of system performance that occurs over time as the result of the fragmentation of a computer's RAM due to poorly designed or programmed applications that fail to free up memory segments when they are no longer needed.
Since it's my first time learning systems programming, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the rules. Now, I got confused about memory leaks. Let's consider an example. Say, Rust is throwing a pointer (to a string) which Python is gonna catch.
In Rust, (I'm just sending the pointer of the CString)
use std::ffi::CString;
pub extern fn do_something() -> *const c_char {
CString::new(some_string).unwrap().as_ptr()
}
In Python, (I'm dereferencing the pointer)
def call_rust():
lib = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary(rustLib)
lib.do_something.restype = ctypes.c_void_p
c_pointer = lib.do_something()
some_string = ctypes.c_char_p(c_pointer).value
Now, my question is about freeing the memory. I thought it should be freed in Python, but then ownership pops in. Because, as_ptr seems to take an immutable reference. So, I got confused about whether I should free the memory in Rust or Python (or both?). If it's gonna be Rust, then how should I go about freeing it when the control flow has landed back into Python?
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With