On Wednesday, 7 August 2013 at 15:21:56 UTC, Gary Willoughby
wrote:
What's the D way of allocating memory? Do you guys just use
malloc() and free()? Or are there functions in phobos that
should be used? I just need a buffer of variable length
allocating every now and then.
I usually use "new": It takes care of T.sieof, it initializes my
memory to T.init, and conveniently returns a slice. Furthermore,
the slice has "append" info, which is always a nice plus. This is
really the equivalent of C++'s new.
If you want to do "semi-manual" memory management, you can use
GC.malloc, which works like normal malloc, but is *still* managed
by the GC. I'd actually recommend "GC.qalloc" over "GC.malloc":
it's the same function, but qalloc actually returns more info,
such as the total amount of memory *actually* allocated. This is
very useful when you need a buffer of arbitrary size, as you get
the most out of your allocation. The memory can also be eagerly
marked as unused with "GC.free", although you'll still have to
wait for a collect for it to actually be freed.
Finally, you have C's malloc and free. I don't have much to say
about these that you shouldn't already know.
If you need a non-initialized buffer, but don't want to bother
with a hand written [GC.]malloc, you can use phobos'
std.array.uninitializedArray and
std.array.minimallyInitializedArray. These conveniently return a
slice of type T, containing N elements, but without actually
initializing them. It's convenient.
