looking behind the scenes

[threadhead]

heyho there!

a few minutes ago i read the manual page of malloc.
i saw that you need to include stdlib.h in order to use the malloc() function.
then i took a look into the stdlib.h file and found something like
"extern void *malloc(blabla...)"

--

where do i find, how the function really works?
something like:

char malloc (size_t bytes)
{
...
}


thanks

[Strogian]

malloc is defined, probably in a source .c file, somewhere in glibc. I keep the sources of everything (including glibc) around in case I want to find something like that. I'll bet you can find it online somewhere, though. (I know there are sites where you can search for anything defined for the kernel)

[mrbl0nde]

i think this is what you are looking for

http://www.micro.uqam.ca/Ressource/introl/Libraries/C/ANSI_C/malloc.c

[threadhead]

thanks, that is exactly was i have been looking for. :)

but where do i find glibc on my box?
or do i have to choose a special option when compiling my kernel?

[Stuka]

malloc.c is in your kernel source tree - if you do a find from the top level of your kernel source, you'll find it somewhere, I'm sure.

[Strogian]

Originally posted by Stuka
malloc.c is in your kernel source tree - if you do a find from the top level of your kernel source, you'll find it somewhere, I'm sure.

Oh ok, didn't realize that... :)

If it were actually in glibc though, you'd have to have the sources for glibc laying around somewhere. Normally, all you have are the compiled libraries (.a and .so files), which are directly linked to other programs. If you wanted it's source, you could get it from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/

[threadhead]

thanks for the links. ;)