16 Examples

Following are a set of examples that are intended to illustrate what exactly is possible with the mpatrol library and how to go about using it effectively.

You should already have built and installed the library and should know how to link programs with the library. Unfortunately, it isn't possible to give specific instructions on how to do this as it varies from system to system and also depends on your preferred compiler and development tools.

However, on a typical SVR4 UNIX system, with mpatrol installed in /usr/local, the mpatrol library can usually be incorporated into a program using the following commands:

• If the mpatrol library was built with no support for any object file format or was built with support for the a.out object file format:

            cc -I/usr/local/include <file> -L/usr/local/lib -lmpatrol
       

• If the mpatrol library was built with support for the COFF or XCOFF object file format access library (not on LynxOS systems):

            cc -I/usr/local/include <file> -L/usr/local/lib -lmpatrol -lld
       

• If the mpatrol library was built with support for the ELF32 or ELF64 object file format access library:

            cc -I/usr/local/include <file> -L/usr/local/lib -lmpatrol -lelf
       

• If the mpatrol library was built with support for the GNU BFD object file format access library:

            cc -I/usr/local/include <file> -L/usr/local/lib -lmpatrol -lbfd
               -liberty -lintl
       

• If the mpatrol library was built with support for the GNU BFD object file format access library and the libunwind stack traversal library:

            cc -I/usr/local/include <file> -L/usr/local/lib -lmpatrol -lbfd
               -liberty -lintl -lunwind
       

• If the mpatrol library was built on HP/UX with support for the GNU BFD object file format access library:

            cc -I/usr/local/include <file> -L/usr/local/lib -lmpatrol -lbfd
               -liberty -lintl -lcl
       

On Windows platforms, with mpatrol installed in /mpatrol, the mpatrol library can usually be incorporated into a program using the following commands:

• If the program is to be linked with the archive version of the mpatrol library:

            cl -I/mpatrol/include -Zi <file> -link -libpath:/mpatrol/lib
               -defaultlib:libmpatrol -defaultlib:imagehlp -pdb:none
       

• If the program is to be linked with the DLL version of the mpatrol library:

            cl -I/mpatrol/include -MD -Zi <file> -link -libpath:/mpatrol/lib
               -defaultlib:mpatrol -pdb:none
       

If you need to link with other libraries, make sure that they don't contain definitions of malloc(), etc., or if they do then you must ensure that the mpatrol library appears before them on the link line. Note also that if the mpatrol library was built on Tru64, or on IRIX with the MP_LIBRARYSTACK_SUPPORT preprocessor macro defined, then the libexc library must be linked in as well. You should also check the section on supported systems (see Supported systems) to see if there are any other issues on the platform that you are using.

You should also know how to set an environment variable on your specific system. Again, this varies from system to system and also depends on the command line interpreter or shell that you use. The environment variable that the mpatrol library uses is called MPATROL_OPTIONS. You can see exactly what options are available for this environment variable by setting it to HELP and then running a program that has been linked with the library.

• Example 1: Getting started.
• Example 2: Detecting incorrect reuse of freed memory.
• Example 3: Detecting use of free memory.
• Example 4: Using overflow buffers.
• Example 5: Checking memory accesses.
• Example 6: Bad memory operations.
• Example 7: Incompatible function calls.
• Example 8: The alloca() functions.
• Example 9: The MP_MALLOC() functions.
• Example 10: Additional useful information.