Question

I’m working (at least trying…) on a Cocoa application, which uses several custom Cocoa frameworks and one of these frameworks is a mix of C++ and Objective C++ (mostly C++) code… The problem is that each memory deallocation inside this framework gives me the Pointer being freed was not allocated error, even in the following trivial case:

class testClass
{
public:
    testClass() { }
    virtual ~testClass() { }
};

void test()
{
    testClass *p = new testClass();
    delete p;
    // malloc: *** error for object 0x2800510: pointer being freed was not allocated
    //*** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug
    p = NULL;
}

malloc_error_break tells me that the object’s destructor is being called, however every next allocation increases the object’s address, so the memory is really not being freed… Please tell me, WHY?!

I have to use Mac OS X 10.6.0, XCode 3.2.1, Apple GCC 4.2.1.

Answer 1

Is there a chance, that one of these custom frameworks redefines new and/or delete? Try to add this replacements to your test program and look if a) the test program builds without complaining about multiple definitions of new and/or delete and b) it runs and shows a delete for every new?

 // not a real replacement, for testing purposes only
void * operator new (size_t sz) 
{
 printf("my new\n");
 return malloc(sz);
}
void operator  delete (void*ptr) 
{
 printf("my delete\n");
 free(ptr);
}
void operator  delete[] (void*ptr) 
{
 printf("my delete[]\n");
 free(ptr);
}