2.6 Memory handling under Windows

Several functions in the library allocates memory. The memory is expected to be de-allocated using the free function. Under Windows, it is sometimes necessary to de-allocate memory in the same module that allocated a memory region. The reason is that different modules use separate heap memory regions. To solve this problem we provide a function to de-allocate memory inside the library.

Note that we do not recommend using this interface generally if you do not care about Windows portability.

2.7 Header file idn-free.h

To use the function explained in this chapter, you need to include the file idn-free.h using:

#include <idn-free.h>

2.8 Memory de-allocation function

idn_free

Function: void idn_free (void * ptr) ¶

ptr: memory region to deallocate, or NULL .

Deallocates memory region by calling free() . If ptr is NULL no operation is performed.

Normally applications de-allocate strings allocated by libidn by calling free() directly. Under Windows, different parts of the same application may use different heap memory, and then it is important to deallocate memory allocated within the same module that allocated it. This function makes that possible.