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Hands-On System Programming with Linux
book

Hands-On System Programming with Linux

by Kaiwan N. Billimoria, Tigran Aivazian
October 2018
Beginner content levelBeginner
794 pages
19h 23m
English
Packt Publishing
Content preview from Hands-On System Programming with Linux

malloc(3) – some FAQs

The following are some FAQs that will help us to learn more about malloc(3):

  • FAQ 1 : How much memory can malloc(3) allocate with a single call?

A rather pointless question in practical terms, but one that is often asked!

The parameter to malloc(3) is an integer value of the size_t data type, so, logically, the maximum number we can pass as a parameter to malloc(3) is the maximum value a size_t can take on the platform. Practically speaking, on a 64-bit Linux, size_t will be 8 bytes, which of course, in bits is 8*8 = 64. Therefore, the maximum amount of memory that can be allocated in a single malloc(3) call is 2^64!

So, how much is it? Let's be empirical (it's important to read in Chapter 19, Troubleshooting and Best ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781788998475Supplemental Content