Guides/DLLs/Memory Management

Some DLL procedures return pointers to memory or require parameters of pointers to memory that cannot be provided by referencing a J array. The following verbs, defined in the standard library, are provided to allocate, free, read and write memory:

verb	description
mema	allocate bytes of memory
memr	read bytes from memory (as type)
memw	write bytes to memory (from type)
memf	free memory allocated by mema

mema allocates memory. The length is a count of bytes. The result is an integer memory address. A 0 result indicates the allocation failed. For example:

address=: mema length

memf frees memory. The argument could be a mema result or pointer returned by a procedure. A 0 result is success and a 1 is failure.

memf address

memr reads data from memory. A _1 count reads up to the first 0 (read a C string).

data=: memr address,byte_offset,count [,type]

memw writes data to memory. If type is char, count can be 1 greater than the length of the string left argument, in which case a 0 is appended (writing a C string).

data memw address,byte_offset,count [,type]

The memr and memw type parameter is 2 4 8 or 16 for char integer float or complex. The default is 2. The count parameter is a count of elements of the type.