我们都被教导必须释放每个已分配的指针。不过,我有点好奇不释放内存的真正代价。在一些明显的情况下,比如在循环内部或线程执行的一部分调用malloc()时,释放是非常重要的,这样就不会有内存泄漏。但是考虑下面两个例子:

首先,如果我有这样的代码:

int main()
{
    char *a = malloc(1024);
    /* Do some arbitrary stuff with 'a' (no alloc functions) */
    return 0;
}

真正的结果是什么?我的想法是进程死亡,然后堆空间也消失了,所以错过对free的调用没有什么坏处(然而,我确实认识到无论如何拥有它对于闭包、可维护性和良好实践的重要性)。我这样想对吗?

Second, let's say I have a program that acts a bit like a shell. Users can declare variables like aaa = 123 and those are stored in some dynamic data structure for later use. Clearly, it seems obvious that you'd use some solution that will calls some *alloc function (hashmap, linked list, something like that). For this kind of program, it doesn't make sense to ever free after calling malloc because these variables must be present at all times during the program's execution and there's no good way (that I can see) to implement this with statically allocated space. Is it bad design to have a bunch of memory that's allocated but only freed as part of the process ending? If so, what's the alternative?


当前回答

===将来的校对和代码重用怎么办?= = =

如果你不编写释放对象的代码,那么你就将代码限制为只有当你可以依赖于进程关闭释放内存时才能安全使用……例如,小型一次性使用项目或“一次性”[1]项目)……你知道这个过程什么时候结束。

如果您确实编写了free()释放所有动态分配内存的代码,那么您就可以在未来验证代码,并让其他人在更大的项目中使用它。


[1]关于“一次性”项目。在“一次性”项目中使用的代码有一种不被丢弃的方法。接下来,十年过去了,你的“一次性”代码仍在使用)。

我听说过一个故事,说有个人写了一些代码,只是为了让他的硬件工作得更好。他说“只是一个爱好,不会有大的和专业的”。多年后,很多人都在使用他的“爱好”代码。

其他回答

在OSTEP操作系统本科课程的在线教科书中,有一个章节恰好讨论了你的问题。

相关的章节是在第6页的内存API章节中“忘记释放内存”,给出了如下解释:

在某些情况下,不调用free()似乎是合理的。为 例如,你的程序是短命的,很快就会退出;在这种情况下, 当进程死亡时,操作系统将清理它分配的所有页面 因此,内存泄漏本身不会发生。虽然这当然“有效” (见第7页的旁白),这可能是一个坏习惯,所以要警惕 选择这样的策略

这段摘录是在介绍虚拟内存概念的上下文中。基本上,在本书的这一点上,作者解释了操作系统的目标之一是“虚拟化内存”,也就是说,让每个程序都相信它可以访问一个非常大的内存地址空间。

在幕后,操作系统会将用户看到的“虚拟地址”转换为指向物理内存的实际地址。

但是,共享物理内存等资源需要操作系统跟踪哪些进程正在使用它。因此,如果一个进程终止,那么在操作系统的能力和设计目标范围内回收该进程的内存,以便它可以重新分配并与其他进程共享内存。


编辑:节选中提到的旁白复制如下。

ASIDE: WHY NO MEMORY IS LEAKED ONCE YOUR PROCESS EXITS When you write a short-lived program, you might allocate some space using malloc(). The program runs and is about to complete: is there need to call free() a bunch of times just before exiting? While it seems wrong not to, no memory will be "lost" in any real sense. The reason is simple: there are really two levels of memory management in the system. The first level of memory management is performed by the OS, which hands out memory to processes when they run, and takes it back when processes exit (or otherwise die). The second level of management is within each process, for example within the heap when you call malloc() and free(). Even if you fail to call free() (and thus leak memory in the heap), the operating system will reclaim all the memory of the process (including those pages for code, stack, and, as relevant here, heap) when the program is finished running. No matter what the state of your heap in your address space, the OS takes back all of those pages when the process dies, thus ensuring that no memory is lost despite the fact that you didn’t free it. Thus, for short-lived programs, leaking memory often does not cause any operational problems (though it may be considered poor form). When you write a long-running server (such as a web server or database management system, which never exit), leaked memory is a much bigger issue, and will eventually lead to a crash when the application runs out of memory. And of course, leaking memory is an even larger issue inside one particular program: the operating system itself. Showing us once again: those who write the kernel code have the toughest job of all... from Page 7 of Memory API chapter of Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau and Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau Arpaci-Dusseau Books March, 2015 (Version 0.90)

几乎每个现代操作系统都会在程序退出后恢复所有已分配的内存空间。我能想到的唯一例外可能是像Palm OS这样的东西,其中程序的静态存储和运行时内存几乎是一样的,所以不释放可能会导致程序占用更多的存储空间。(我只是在猜测。)

所以一般来说,这样做没有什么坏处,除了存储容量超过所需的运行时成本。当然,在您给出的示例中,您希望保留可能被使用的变量的内存,直到它被清除。

然而,一旦你不再需要内存,就立即释放内存,并在程序退出时释放你仍然拥有的内存,这被认为是一种很好的方式。它更像是一种了解您正在使用哪些内存的练习,并考虑是否仍然需要它。如果不进行跟踪,可能会出现内存泄漏。

On the other hand, the similar admonition to close your files on exit has a much more concrete result - if you don't, the data you wrote to them might not get flushed, or if they're a temp file, they might not get deleted when you're done. Also, database handles should have their transactions committed and then closed when you're done with them. Similarly, if you're using an object oriented language like C++ or Objective C, not freeing an object when you're done with it will mean the destructor will never get called, and any resources the class is responsible might not get cleaned up.

It depends on the OS environment the program is running in, as others have already noted, and for long running processes, freeing memory and avoiding even very slow leaks is important always. But if the operating system deals with stuff, as Unix has done for example since probably forever, then you don't need to free memory, nor close files (the kernel closes all open file descriptors when a process exits.) If your program allocates a lot of memory, it may even be beneficial to exit without "hesitation". I find that when I quit Firefox, it spends several !minutes ! paging in gigabytes of memory in many processes. I guess this is due to having to call destructors on C++ objects. This is actually terrible. Some might argue, that this is necessary to save state consistently, but in my opinion, long-running interactive programs like browsers, editors and design programs, just to mention a few, should ensure that any state information, preferences, open windows/pages, documents etc is frequently written to permanent storage, to avoid loss of work in case of a crash. Then this state-saving can be performed again quickly when the user elects to quit, and when completed, the processes should just exit immediately.

在那方面你完全正确。在小的程序中,变量必须存在,直到程序结束,释放内存并没有真正的好处。

事实上,我曾经参与过一个项目,在这个项目中,程序的每次执行都非常复杂,但时间相对较短,决定只是保持分配内存,而不是因为错误地释放内存而破坏项目的稳定。

话虽如此,在大多数程序中,这并不是一个真正的选项,或者它会导致内存耗尽。

===将来的校对和代码重用怎么办?= = =

如果你不编写释放对象的代码,那么你就将代码限制为只有当你可以依赖于进程关闭释放内存时才能安全使用……例如,小型一次性使用项目或“一次性”[1]项目)……你知道这个过程什么时候结束。

如果您确实编写了free()释放所有动态分配内存的代码,那么您就可以在未来验证代码,并让其他人在更大的项目中使用它。


[1]关于“一次性”项目。在“一次性”项目中使用的代码有一种不被丢弃的方法。接下来,十年过去了,你的“一次性”代码仍在使用)。

我听说过一个故事,说有个人写了一些代码,只是为了让他的硬件工作得更好。他说“只是一个爱好,不会有大的和专业的”。多年后,很多人都在使用他的“爱好”代码。