TSmalloc

Traffic Server memory allocation API.

Synopsis

#include <ts/ts.h>
void *TSmalloc(size_t size)
template<typename T>
T *TSRalloc(size_t count = 1)
void *TSrealloc(void *ptr, size_t size)
char *TSstrdup(const char *str)
char *TSstrndup(const char *str, size_t size)
size_t TSstrlcpy(char *dst, const char *src, size_t size)
size_t TSstrlcat(char *dst, const char *src, size_t size)
void TSfree(void *ptr)

Description

Traffic Server provides a number of routines for allocating and freeing memory. These routines correspond to similar routines in the C library. For example, TSrealloc() behaves like the C library routine realloc. There are two reasons to use the routines provided by Traffic Server. The first is portability. The Traffic Server API routines behave the same on all of Traffic Servers supported platforms. For example, realloc does not accept an argument of nullptr on some platforms. The second reason is that the Traffic Server routines actually track the memory allocations by file and line number. This tracking is very efficient, is always turned on, and is useful for tracking down memory leaks.

TSmalloc() returns a pointer to size bytes of memory allocated from the heap. Traffic Server uses TSmalloc() internally for memory allocations. Always use TSfree() to release memory allocated by TSmalloc(); do not use free.

TSRalloc() returns a pointer, of type T *, to allocated memory with enough bytes to hold an array of count (default value of :code;`1`) instances of T. The memory is “raw”, no constructor of T is called for the array elements. This function in turn calls TSmalloc(), so the memory it allocates should be released by calling TSfree().

TSstrdup() returns a pointer to a new string that is a duplicate of the string pointed to by str. The memory for the new string is allocated using TSmalloc() and should be freed by a call to TSfree(). TSstrndup() returns a pointer to a new string that is a duplicate of the string pointed to by str but is at most size bytes long. The new string will be NUL-terminated. This API is very useful for transforming non NUL-terminated string values returned by APIs such as TSMimeHdrFieldValueStringGet() into NUL-terminated string values. The memory for the new string is allocated using TSmalloc() and should be freed by a call to TSfree().

TSstrlcpy() copies up to size - 1 characters from the NUL-terminated string src to dst, NUL-terminating the result.

TSstrlcat() appends the NUL-terminated string src to the end of dst. It will append at most size - strlen(dst) - 1 bytes, NUL-terminating the result.

TSfree() releases the memory allocated by TSmalloc() or TSrealloc(). If ptr is nullptr, TSfree() does no operation.

Use of these functions should be avoided in new code. For dynamic memory allocation, prefer in general to use C++ Standard Library containers and smart pointers. Use of C++ new and delete operators is the next best option.

See also

TSAPI(3ts)