3.2.2.11 Statistics for Memory Allocation with malloc

You can get information about dynamic memory allocation by calling the mallinfo function. This function and its associated data type are declared in malloc.h; they are an extension of the standard SVID/XPG version.

Data Type: struct mallinfo

This structure type is used to return information about the dynamic memory allocator. It contains the following members:

int arena

This is the total size of memory allocated with sbrk by malloc, in bytes.

int ordblks

This is the number of chunks not in use. (The memory allocator internally gets chunks of memory from the operating system, and then carves them up to satisfy individual malloc requests; see Efficiency and Malloc.)

int smblks

This field is unused.

int hblks

This is the total number of chunks allocated with mmap.

int hblkhd

This is the total size of memory allocated with mmap, in bytes.

int usmblks

This field is unused.

int fsmblks

This field is unused.

int uordblks

This is the total size of memory occupied by chunks handed out by malloc.

int fordblks

This is the total size of memory occupied by free (not in use) chunks.

int keepcost

This is the size of the top-most releasable chunk that normally borders the end of the heap (i.e., the high end of the virtual address space’s data segment).

Function: struct mallinfo mallinfo (void)

Preliminary: | MT-Unsafe init const:mallopt | AS-Unsafe init lock | AC-Unsafe init lock | See POSIX Safety Concepts.

This function returns information about the current dynamic memory usage in a structure of type struct mallinfo.