Overlays and Underhandedness

String constants in the C language are considered to be static arrays of characters accessed through a pointer constant. The arrays are potentially writable even though their pointer is a constant. SMARTALLOC uses the compile-time definition ./smartall.wml to obtain the name of the file in which a call on buffer allocation was performed. Rather than reserve space in a buffer to save this information, SMARTALLOC simply stores the pointer to the compiled-in text of the file name. This works fine as long as the program does not overlay its data among modules. If data are overlayed, the area of memory which contained the file name at the time it was saved in the buffer may contain something else entirely when sm_dump() gets around to using the pointer to edit the file name which allocated the buffer.

If you want to use SMARTALLOC in a program with overlayed data, you’ll have to modify smartall.c to either copy the file name to a fixed-length field added to the abufhead structure, or else allocate storage with malloc(), copy the file name there, and set the abfname pointer to that buffer, then remember to release the buffer in sm_free. Either of these approaches are wasteful of storage and time, and should be considered only if there is no alternative. Since most initial debugging is done in non-overlayed environments, the restrictions on SMARTALLOC with data overlaying may never prove a problem. Note that conventional overlaying of code, by far the most common form of overlaying, poses no problems for SMARTALLOC; you need only be concerned if you’re using exotic tools for data overlaying on MS-DOS or other address-space-challenged systems.

Since a C language ”constant“ string can actually be written into, most C compilers generate a unique copy of each string used in a module, even if the same constant string appears many times. In modules that contain many calls on allocation functions, this results in substantial wasted storage for the strings that identify the file name. If your compiler permits optimization of multiple occurrences of constant strings, enabling this mode will eliminate the overhead for these strings. Of course, it’s up to you to make sure choosing this compiler mode won’t wreak havoc on some other part of your program.

See also

• Installing SMARTALLOC

• Squelching SMARTALLOC

• Living with Libraries

• SMARTALLOC Details

• When SMARTALLOC Is Disabled

• The alloc() Function

• Test and Demonstration Program

• Invitation to Hack

Possible Next Steps

Go back to Smart Memory Allocation.

Go back to Developer Guide.