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MALLOC(3) Library Functions Manual MALLOC(3)

malloc, calloc, realloc, free, reallocarray, recallocarray, freezero, aligned_alloc, malloc_conceal, calloc_conceal — memory allocation and deallocation

#include <stdlib.h>

void *
malloc(size_t size);

void *
calloc(size_t nmemb, size_t size);

void *
realloc(void *ptr, size_t size);

void
free(void *ptr);

void *
reallocarray(void *ptr, size_t nmemb, size_t size);

void *
recallocarray(void *ptr, size_t oldnmemb, size_t nmemb, size_t size);

void
freezero(void *ptr, size_t size);

void *
aligned_alloc(size_t alignment, size_t size);

void *
malloc_conceal(size_t size);

void *
calloc_conceal(size_t nmemb, size_t size);

const char * const malloc_options;

The standard functions (), calloc(), and realloc() allocate , regions of memory to store values. The malloc() function allocates uninitialized space for an object of the specified size. malloc() maintains multiple lists of free objects according to size, allocating from the appropriate list or requesting memory from the kernel. The allocated space is suitably aligned (after possible pointer coercion) for storage of any type of object.

The () function allocates space for an array of nmemb objects, each of the specified size. The space is initialized to zero.

The () function changes the size of the object pointed to by ptr to size bytes and returns a pointer to the (possibly moved) object. If ptr is not NULL, it must be a pointer returned by an earlier call to an allocation or reallocation function that was not freed in between. The contents of the object are unchanged up to the lesser of the new and old sizes. If the new size is larger, the value of the newly allocated portion of the object is indeterminate and uninitialized. If the space cannot be allocated, the object pointed to by ptr is unchanged. If ptr is NULL, realloc() behaves like malloc() and allocates a new object.

The () function causes the space pointed to by ptr to be either placed on a list of free blocks to make it available for future allocation or, when appropriate, to be returned to the kernel using munmap(2). If ptr is NULL, no action occurs. If ptr was previously freed by free() or a reallocation function, the behavior is undefined and the double free is a security concern.

Designed for safe allocation of arrays, the () function is similar to realloc() except it operates on nmemb members of size size and checks for integer overflow in the calculation nmemb * size.

Used for the allocation of memory holding sensitive data, the () and freezero() functions guarantee that memory becoming unallocated is explicitly , meaning pages of memory are disposed via munmap(2) and cached free objects are cleared with explicit_bzero(3).

The () function is similar to reallocarray() except it ensures newly allocated memory is cleared similar to calloc(). If ptr is NULL, oldnmemb is ignored and the call is equivalent to calloc(). If ptr is not NULL, oldnmemb must be a value such that oldnmemb * size is the size of the earlier allocation that returned ptr, otherwise the behavior is undefined.

The () function is similar to the free() function except it ensures memory is explicitly discarded. If ptr is NULL, no action occurs. If ptr is not NULL, the size argument must be equal to or smaller than the size of the earlier allocation that returned ptr. freezero() guarantees the memory range starting at ptr with length size is discarded while deallocating the whole object originally allocated.

The () function allocates size bytes of memory such that the allocation's base address is a multiple of alignment. The requested alignment must be a power of 2. If size is not a multiple of alignment, behavior is undefined.

The () and () functions behave the same as malloc() and calloc() respectively, with the exception that the allocation returned is marked with the MAP_CONCEAL mmap(2) flag and calling free() on the allocation will discard the contents explicitly. A reallocation of a concealed allocation will leave these properties intact.

MALLOC OPTIONS

Upon the first call to the malloc() family of functions, an initialization sequence inspects the value of the vm.malloc_conf sysctl(2), next checks the environment for a variable called MALLOC_OPTIONS, and finally looks at the global variable malloc_options in the program. Since malloc() might already get called before the beginning of (), either initialize malloc_options to a string literal at file scope or do not declare it at all.

Each of the three strings is scanned for the flags documented below. Unless otherwise noted uppercase means on, lowercase means off. During initialization, flags occurring later modify the behaviour that was requested by flags processed earlier.

“Canaries”. Add canaries at the end of allocations in order to detect heap overflows. The canary's content is checked when free is called. If it has been corrupted, the process is aborted.
“Dump”. () will dump a leak report using utrace(2) at exit. To record the dump:

$ MALLOC_OPTIONS=D ktrace -tu program ...

To view the leak report:

$ kdump -u malloc ...

By default, the immediate caller of a malloc function will be recorded. Use malloc option 2, 3 or 4 to record deeper call stacks. These malloc options imply D.

“Freecheck”. Enable more extensive double free and write after free detection. All chunks in the delayed free list will be checked for double frees and write after frees. Unused pages on the freelist are read and write protected to cause a segmentation fault upon access.
“Guard”. Enable guard pages. Each page size or larger allocation is followed by a guard page that will cause a segmentation fault upon any access.
“More junking”. Increase the junk level by one if it is smaller than 2.
“Less junking”. Decrease the junk level by one if it is larger than 0. Junking writes some junk bytes into the area allocated. Junk is bytes of 0xdb when allocating; small allocations are initially junked with 0xdf as are freed allocations. By default the junk level is 1: after free, small chunks are completely junked; for pages the first part is junked. After a delay, the filling pattern is validated and the process is aborted if the pattern was modified. For junk level 2, junking is done on allocation as well and without size restrictions. If the junk level is zero, no junking is performed.
“realloc”. Always reallocate when () is called, even if the initial allocation was big enough.
Enable all options suitable for security auditing.
“Free unmap”. Enable use after free protection for larger allocations. Unused pages on the freelist are read and write protected to cause a segmentation fault upon access.
“Verbose”. Use with D to get a verbose dump of malloc's internal state.
“xmalloc”. Rather than return failure to handle out-of-memory conditions gracefully, abort(3) the program with a diagnostic message on stderr.
“Halve the cache size”. Decrease the size of the free page cache by a factor of two.
“Double the cache size”. Increase the size of the free page cache by a factor of two.

If a program changes behavior if any of these options (except X) are used, it is buggy.

The default size of the cache is 64 single page allocations. It also caches a number of larger regions. Multi-threaded programs use multiple pools.

Upon successful completion, the allocation functions return a pointer to the allocated space; otherwise, NULL is returned and errno is set to ENOMEM. The function aligned_alloc() returns NULL and sets errno to EINVAL if alignment is not a power of 2.

If nmemb or size is equal to 0, a unique pointer to an access protected, zero sized object is returned. Access via this pointer will generate a SIGSEGV exception.

If multiplying nmemb and size results in integer overflow, calloc(), reallocarray() and recallocarray() return NULL and set errno to ENOMEM.

If ptr is not NULL and multiplying oldnmemb and size results in integer overflow, recallocarray() returns NULL and sets errno to EINVAL.

Consider () or the extensions reallocarray() and recallocarray() when there is multiplication in the size argument of malloc() or realloc(). For example, avoid this common idiom as it may lead to integer overflow:

if ((p = malloc(num * size)) == NULL)
	err(1, NULL);

A drop-in replacement is the OpenBSD extension ():

if ((p = reallocarray(NULL, num, size)) == NULL)
	err(1, NULL);

Alternatively, () may be used at the cost of initialization overhead.

When using (), be careful to avoid the following idiom:

size += 50;
if ((p = realloc(p, size)) == NULL)
	return (NULL);

Do not adjust the variable describing how much memory has been allocated until the allocation has been successful. This can cause aberrant program behavior if the incorrect size value is used. In most cases, the above sample will also result in a leak of memory. As stated earlier, a return value of NULL indicates that the old object still remains allocated. Better code looks like this:

newsize = size + 50;
if ((newp = realloc(p, newsize)) == NULL) {
	free(p);
	p = NULL;
	size = 0;
	return (NULL);
}
p = newp;
size = newsize;

As with (), it is important to ensure the new size value will not overflow; i.e. avoid allocations like the following:

if ((newp = realloc(p, num * size)) == NULL) {
	...

Instead, use ():

if ((newp = reallocarray(p, num, size)) == NULL) {
	...

Calling () with a NULL ptr is equivalent to calling malloc(). Instead of this idiom:

if (p == NULL)
	newp = malloc(newsize);
else
	newp = realloc(p, newsize);

Use the following:

newp = realloc(p, newsize);

The () function should be used for resizing objects containing sensitive data like keys. To avoid leaking information, it guarantees memory is cleared before placing it on the internal free list. Deallocation of such an object should be done by calling freezero().

String of option flags.

If malloc() must be used with multiplication, be sure to test for overflow:

size_t num, size;
...

/* Check for size_t overflow */
if (size && num > SIZE_MAX / size)
	errc(1, EOVERFLOW, "overflow");

if ((p = malloc(num * size)) == NULL)
	err(1, NULL);

The above test is not sufficient in all cases. For example, multiplying ints requires a different set of checks:

int num, size;
...

/* Avoid invalid requests */
if (size < 0 || num < 0)
	errc(1, EOVERFLOW, "overflow");

/* Check for signed int overflow */
if (size && num > INT_MAX / size)
	errc(1, EOVERFLOW, "overflow");

if ((p = malloc(num * size)) == NULL)
	err(1, NULL);

Assuming the implementation checks for integer overflow as OpenBSD does, it is much easier to use calloc(), reallocarray(), or recallocarray().

The above examples could be simplified to:

if ((p = reallocarray(NULL, num, size)) == NULL)
	err(1, NULL);

or at the cost of initialization:

if ((p = calloc(num, size)) == NULL)
	err(1, NULL);

Set a systemwide reduction of the cache to a quarter of the default size and use guard pages:

# sysctl vm.malloc_conf='G<<'

If any of the functions detect an error condition, a message will be printed to file descriptor 2 (not using stdio). Errors will result in the process being aborted.

Here is a brief description of the error messages and what they mean:

“out of memory”
If the X option is specified, it is an error for the allocation functions to return NULL.
“bogus pointer (double free?)”
An attempt to free() or reallocate an unallocated pointer was made.
“double free”
There was an attempt to free an allocation that had already been freed.
“write to free mem address[start..end]@size”
An allocation has been modified after it was freed, or a chunk that was never allocated was written to. The range at which corruption was detected is printed between [ and ].

Enabling option D allows malloc to print information about where the allocation was done.

“modified chunk-pointer”
The pointer passed to free() or a reallocation function has been modified.
“canary corrupted address[offset]@length/size”
A byte after the requested length has been overwritten, indicating a heap overflow. The offset at which corruption was detected is printed between [ and ], the requested length of the allocation is printed before the / and the size of the allocation after the /.
“recorded size oldsize inconsistent with size”
recallocarray() or freezero() has detected that the given old size does not match the recorded size in its meta data. Enabling option C allows recallocarray() to catch more of these cases.
“recursive call”
An attempt was made to call recursively into these functions, i.e., from a signal handler. This behavior is not supported. In particular, signal handlers should use any of the malloc() functions nor utilize any other functions which may call malloc() (e.g., stdio(3) routines).
“unknown char in MALLOC_OPTIONS”
We found something we didn't understand.
any other error
malloc() detected an internal error; consult sources and/or wizards.

brk(2), mmap(2), munmap(2), sysctl(2), alloca(3), getpagesize(3), posix_memalign(3)

The malloc(), calloc(), realloc(), and free() functions conform to ANSI X3.159-1989 (“ANSI C89”). The aligned_alloc() function conforms to ISO/IEC 9899:2011 (“ISO C11”). The reallocarray() function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2024 (“POSIX.1”).

If nmemb or size are 0, the return value is implementation defined; other conforming implementations may return NULL in this case.

The MALLOC_OPTIONS environment variable, the vm.malloc_conf sysctl and the DIAGNOSTICS output are extensions to the standard.

A free() internal kernel function and a predecessor to malloc(), alloc(), first appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX. C library functions alloc() and free() appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX. The functions malloc(), calloc(), and realloc() first appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.

A new implementation by Chris Kingsley was introduced in 4.2BSD, followed by a complete rewrite by Poul-Henning Kamp which appeared in FreeBSD 2.2 and was included in OpenBSD 2.0. These implementations were all sbrk(2) based. In OpenBSD 3.8, Thierry Deval rewrote malloc to use the mmap(2) system call, making the page addresses returned by malloc random. A rewrite by Otto Moerbeek introducing a new central data structure and more randomization appeared in OpenBSD 4.4.

The reallocarray() function appeared in OpenBSD 5.6. The recallocarray() function appeared in OpenBSD 6.1. The freezero() function appeared in OpenBSD 6.2. The aligned_alloc() function appeared in OpenBSD 6.5. The malloc_conceal() and calloc_conceal() functions appeared in OpenBSD 6.6.

When using malloc(), be wary of signed integer and size_t overflow especially when there is multiplication in the size argument.

Signed integer overflow will cause undefined behavior which compilers typically handle by wrapping back around to negative numbers. Depending on the input, this can result in allocating more or less memory than intended.

An unsigned overflow has defined behavior which will wrap back around and return less memory than intended.

A signed or unsigned integer overflow is a risk if less memory is returned than intended. Subsequent code may corrupt the heap by writing beyond the memory that was allocated. An attacker may be able to leverage this heap corruption to execute arbitrary code.

Consider using calloc(), reallocarray() or recallocarray() instead of using multiplication in malloc() and realloc() to avoid these problems on OpenBSD.

The mechanism to record caller functions when using malloc options 2, 3, or 4 is not guaranteed to work for all platforms, compilers or compilation options, and might even crash your program. Use for debugging purposes.

June 4, 2025 OpenBSD-current