erl_malloc

Types

Allocates an (ETERM) structure.

Specify etype as one of the following constants:

• ERL_INTEGER
• ERL_U_INTEGER (unsigned integer)
• ERL_ATOM
• ERL_PID (Erlang process identifier)
• ERL_PORT
• ERL_REF (Erlang reference)
• ERL_LIST
• ERL_EMPTY_LIST
• ERL_TUPLE
• ERL_BINARY
• ERL_FLOAT
• ERL_VARIABLE
• ERL_SMALL_BIG (bignum)
• ERL_U_SMALL_BIG (bignum)

ERL_SMALL_BIG and ERL_U_SMALL_BIG are for creating Erlang bignums, which can contain integers of any size. The size of an integer in Erlang is machine-dependent, but any integer > 2^28 requires a bignum.

Clears the freelist, where blocks are placed when they are released by erl_free_term() and erl_free_compound().

Types

Reports term allocation statistics.

allocated and freed are initialized to contain information about the fix-allocator used to allocate ETERM components.

• allocated is the number of blocks currently allocated to ETERM objects.

• freed is the length of the freelist, where blocks are placed when they are released by erl_free_term() and erl_free_compound().

Types

Calls the standard free() function.

Types

Frees an array of Erlang terms.

• array is an array of ETERM* objects.
• size is the number of terms in the array.

Types

Normally it is the programmer's responsibility to free each Erlang term that has been returned from any of the Erl_Interface functions. However, as many of the functions that build new Erlang terms in fact share objects with other existing terms, it can be difficult for the programmer to maintain pointers to all such terms to free them individually.

erl_free_compound() recursively frees all of the subterms associated with a specified Erlang term, regardless of whether we are still holding pointers to the subterms.

For an example, see section Building Terms and Patterns in the User's Guide.

Types

Frees an Erlang term.

Types

Calls the standard malloc() function.