Question

I have a mixed C/C++ program. It contains a flex/bison parser which targets C, while the remainder is C++.

Being C, the generated parser and scanner manage their memory with malloc, realloc and free. They are good enough to expose hooks allowing me to submit my own implementations of these functions. As you might expect, the rest of the (C++) program “wants” to use new, delete, etc.

Doing a little research seems to show that the relevant standards do not guarantee that such mixing should work. Particularly the C “heap” is not necessarily the C++ “free area”. It seems the two schemes can trample each other.

On top of this, someday (soon) this program will probably want to integrate a customized heap implementation such as tcmalloc, used by both C and C++.

What is the “right” thing to do here?

Given the desire to integrate tcmalloc (which explains how to link with C programs) I’m tempted to find some cross-type, cross-thread, cross-everything overload/hook/whatever into C++ memory management. With that I could point all C++ allocation/release calls back to their C equivalents (which in turn land on tcmalloc.)

Does such a pan-galactic global C++ hook exist? Might it already be doing what I want, similar to how ios_base::sync_with_stdio secretly marries iostream and stdio by default?

I am not interested in talking about stdio vs. iostreams, nor about switching parser generators nor using the C++ flex/bison skeletons (they introduce independent headaches.)

EDIT: Please include the names of those sections of the C++ standard that support your answer.

Answer 1

The standard does guarantee that mixing the two allocation variants will work. What it doesn’t permit is things like calling free on memory that came from new, since they may use a totally different arena for the two types.

Providing you remember to call the correct deallocation function for a given block of memory, you will be fine. They won’t trample each other if you follow the rules and, if you don’t follow the rules then, technically, you’re doing the trampling, not them 🙂

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The controlling part of the C++11 standard is 20.6.13 C library which states, paraphrased:

• The functions calloc, malloc, free and realloc are provided, based on the C standard.
• The functions do not use ::operator new() or ::operator delete().
• This allows the heritage C stuff to use a different memory arena then the normal C++ memory allocation.

That second bullet point is interesting in light of what you’re eventually proposing, dropping in tcmalloc to replace the C heritage functions and have C++ use it as well.

There’s a footnote in the standard which explains why they don’t use let malloc() call ::operator new():

The intent is to have operator new() implementable by calling std::malloc() or std::calloc(). In other words, they want to avoid a circular dependency.

However, while it allows operator new() to call malloc(), I’m not sure that the standard actually requires it. So, to be safe, you’d probably want to inject tcmalloc into both the C and C++ areas.

You’ve indicated you already know how to do that for C. For C++, it can be done by simply providing the entire set of global operator new()/delete() functions in your code, suitably written to call tcmalloc under the covers. The C++ standard states in 3.7.4 Dynamic storage duration:

The library provides default definitions for the global allocation and deallocation functions. Some global allocation and deallocation functions are replaceable.

A C++ program shall provide at most one definition of a replaceable allocation or deallocation function. Any such function definition replaces the
default version provided in the library.

The following allocation and deallocation functions are implicitly declared in global scope in each translation unit of a program:

• void* operator new(std::size_t);
• void* operator new[](std::size_t);
• void operator delete(void*);
• void operator delete[](void*);