Lecture

Dynamic Memory Management: Using Realloc in C

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In course

CS-202: Computer systems

This course will teach operating systems and networks in an integrated fashion,emphasising the fundamental concepts and techniques that make their interaction possible/practical. Core lectures will be coupled with C programming lectures and assignments for ...

Description

This lecture covers dynamic memory allocation in C, focusing on the realloc function. The instructor explains how realloc changes the size of an allocated memory area, allowing for both increases and decreases in size. It is emphasized that realloc functions similarly to malloc, with the potential to move the pointer if necessary while maintaining data integrity. The lecture details the behavior of realloc, including what happens when it fails, such as returning NULL and leaving the old memory unchanged. The instructor also discusses the implications of reallocating memory, including the fact that the newly allocated memory is not initialized. The lecture provides examples of how to implement realloc, including the syntax and the conditions under which it operates. The importance of understanding realloc's functionality in the context of dynamic arrays is highlighted, ensuring that students grasp the nuances of memory management in C programming.

Instructors (2)

Jean-Cédric Chappelier

Jean-Cédric Chappelier is currently senior researcher and lecturer in Computational Linguistics at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland). He holds an Ms.Sci. and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Paris (France).

Edouard Bugnion

Edouard Bugnion joined EPFL in 2012, where his focus is on datacenter systems. His areas of interest include operating systems, datacenter infrastructure (systems and networking), and computer architecture. Before joining EPFL, Edouard spent 18 years in the US, where he studied at Stanford and co-founded two startups: VMware and Nuova Systems (acquired by Cisco). At VMware from 1998 until 2005, he played many roles including CTO. At Nuova/Cisco from 2005 until 2011, he helped build the core engineering team and became the VP/CTO of Ciscos Server, Access, and Virtualization Technology Group, a group that brought to market Ciscos Unified Computing System (UCS) platform for virtualized datacenters. Prof. Bugnion is a Fellow of the ACM. Together with his colleagues, he received the ACM Software System Award for VMware 1.0 in 2009. His paper Disco: Running Commodity Operating Systems on Scalable Multiprocessors" received a Best Paper Award at SOSP '97 and was entered into the ACM SIGOPS Hall of Fame Award in 2008. At EPFL, he received the OSDI 2014 Best Paper Award for his work on the IX dataplane operating system

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Theoretical computer science

Programming language theory: High-level programming languages

Related concepts (32)

System programming language

A system programming language is a programming language used for system programming; such languages are designed for writing system software, which usually requires different development approaches when compared with application software. Edsger Dijkstra refers to these languages as machine oriented high order languages, or mohol. General-purpose programming languages tend to focus on generic features to allow programs written in the language to use the same code on different platforms.

Object-oriented programming

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or properties), and the code is in the form of procedures (often known as methods). A common feature of objects is that procedures (or methods) are attached to them and can access and modify the object's data fields. In this brand of OOP, there is usually a special name such as or used to refer to the current object.

Array (data structure)

In computer science, an array is a data structure consisting of a collection of elements (values or variables), of same memory size, each identified by at least one array index or key. An array is stored such that the position of each element can be computed from its index tuple by a mathematical formula. The simplest type of data structure is a linear array, also called one-dimensional array. For example, an array of ten 32-bit (4-byte) integer variables, with indices 0 through 9, may be stored as ten words at memory addresses 2000, 2004, 2008, .

Esoteric programming language

An esoteric programming language (sometimes shortened to esolang) is a programming language designed to test the boundaries of computer programming language design, as a proof of concept, as software art, as a hacking interface to another language (particularly functional programming or procedural programming languages), or as a joke. The use of the word esoteric distinguishes them from languages that working developers use to write software.

Comparison of programming languages

Programming languages are used for controlling the behavior of a machine (often a computer). Like natural languages, programming languages follow rules for syntax and semantics. There are thousands of programming languages and new ones are created every year. Few languages ever become sufficiently popular that they are used by more than a few people, but professional programmers may use dozens of languages in a career. Most programming languages are not standardized by an international (or national) standard, even widely used ones, such as Perl or Standard ML (despite the name).

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