Embedded Systems Design, 2nd Edition

354 Embedded systems design

returned. This is a common programming error. In reply, the

calling task receives a pointer that points at the start of the memory

if the call was successful, or an error code if it was not. Very often,

the call is extended to support partial allocation where the system

will still return a pointer to the start of the memory along with an

error/status message stating that not all the memory is available

and that the x bytes were allocated. Some other systems would

class this partial allocation as an error and return an error message

indicating failure.

Memory that was allocated via malloc() calls can be

returned to the memory ...