| Copyright | (c) The FFI task force 2001 |
|---|---|
| License | (c) The FFI task force 2001 |
| Maintainer | ffi@haskell.org |
| Stability | provisional |
| Portability | portable |
| Safe Haskell | Trustworthy |
Foreign.Marshal.Alloc
Description
The module Foreign.Marshal.Alloc provides operations to allocate and deallocate blocks of raw memory (i.e., unstructured chunks of memory outside of the area maintained by the Haskell storage manager). These memory blocks are commonly used to pass compound data structures to foreign functions or to provide space in which compound result values are obtained from foreign functions.
If any of the allocation functions fails, an exception is thrown.
In some cases, memory exhaustion may mean the process is terminated.
If free or reallocBytes is applied to a memory area
that has been allocated with alloca or allocaBytes, the
behaviour is undefined. Any further access to memory areas allocated with
alloca or allocaBytes, after the computation that was passed to
the allocation function has terminated, leads to undefined behaviour. Any
further access to the memory area referenced by a pointer passed to
realloc, reallocBytes, or free entails undefined
behaviour.
All storage allocated by functions that allocate based on a size in bytes must be sufficiently aligned for any of the basic foreign types that fits into the newly allocated storage. All storage allocated by functions that allocate based on a specific type must be sufficiently aligned for that type. Array allocation routines need to obey the same alignment constraints for each array element.
- alloca :: Storable a => (Ptr a -> IO b) -> IO b
- allocaBytes :: Int -> (Ptr a -> IO b) -> IO b
- allocaBytesAligned :: Int -> Int -> (Ptr a -> IO b) -> IO b
- malloc :: Storable a => IO (Ptr a)
- mallocBytes :: Int -> IO (Ptr a)
- realloc :: Storable b => Ptr a -> IO (Ptr b)
- reallocBytes :: Ptr a -> Int -> IO (Ptr a)
- free :: Ptr a -> IO ()
- finalizerFree :: FinalizerPtr a
Memory allocation
Local allocation
alloca :: Storable a => (Ptr a -> IO b) -> IO bSource
alloca ff, passing as argument
a pointer to a temporarily allocated block of memory sufficient to
hold values of type a.
The memory is freed when f terminates (either normally or via an
exception), so the pointer passed to f must not be used after this.
allocaBytes :: Int -> (Ptr a -> IO b) -> IO bSource
allocaBytes n ff, passing as argument
a pointer to a temporarily allocated block of memory of n bytes.
The block of memory is sufficiently aligned for any of the basic
foreign types that fits into a memory block of the allocated size.
The memory is freed when f terminates (either normally or via an
exception), so the pointer passed to f must not be used after this.
Dynamic allocation
malloc :: Storable a => IO (Ptr a)Source
Allocate a block of memory that is sufficient to hold values of type
a. The size of the area allocated is determined by the sizeOf
method from the instance of Storable for the appropriate type.
The memory may be deallocated using free or finalizerFree when
no longer required.
mallocBytes :: Int -> IO (Ptr a)Source
Allocate a block of memory of the given number of bytes. The block of memory is sufficiently aligned for any of the basic foreign types that fits into a memory block of the allocated size.
The memory may be deallocated using free or finalizerFree when
no longer required.
realloc :: Storable b => Ptr a -> IO (Ptr b)Source
Resize a memory area that was allocated with malloc or mallocBytes
to the size needed to store values of type b. The returned pointer
may refer to an entirely different memory area, but will be suitably
aligned to hold values of type b. The contents of the referenced
memory area will be the same as of the original pointer up to the
minimum of the original size and the size of values of type b.
If the argument to realloc is nullPtr, realloc behaves like
malloc.
reallocBytes :: Ptr a -> Int -> IO (Ptr a)Source
Resize a memory area that was allocated with malloc or mallocBytes
to the given size. The returned pointer may refer to an entirely
different memory area, but will be sufficiently aligned for any of the
basic foreign types that fits into a memory block of the given size.
The contents of the referenced memory area will be the same as of
the original pointer up to the minimum of the original size and the
given size.
If the pointer argument to reallocBytes is nullPtr, reallocBytes
behaves like malloc. If the requested size is 0, reallocBytes
behaves like free.
Free a block of memory that was allocated with malloc,
mallocBytes, realloc, reallocBytes, new
or any of the newX functions in Foreign.Marshal.Array or
Foreign.C.String.
finalizerFree :: FinalizerPtr aSource
A pointer to a foreign function equivalent to free, which may be
used as a finalizer (cf ForeignPtr) for storage
allocated with malloc, mallocBytes, realloc or reallocBytes.