2008/03/04

Will 'free' return the memory Immediately to the OS ?

> Will 'free' return the memory Immediately to the OS ?

It depends on how your free() is implemented.

Most libc's use a complex algorithm to do memory manangement,
in order to get the speed, maybe they won't give the memory
to OS immediately after free().

The C std just can guarantee that after your free(), that
memory block can be used for further malloc().