Part 12. Allocators and Memory Management

Memory is one of the most important ideas in Zig.

10 items

Section	Title
1	Why Zig Uses Allocators
2	General Purpose Allocator
3	Arena Allocator
4	Fixed Buffer Allocator
5	Page Allocator
6	Custom Allocators
7	Allocation Failure Handling
8	Memory Leak Detection
9	Lifetime Management
10	Building Allocation-Friendly APIs

Writes › Book › Zig › Part 12. Allocators and Memory Management ›

Why Zig Uses Allocators

Memory is one of the most important ideas in Zig.

Writes › Book › Zig › Part 12. Allocators and Memory Management ›

General Purpose Allocator

The general purpose allocator is Zig’s standard allocator for ordinary heap allocation.

Writes › Book › Zig › Part 12. Allocators and Memory Management ›

Arena Allocator

An arena allocator is an allocator that frees many allocations at once.

Writes › Book › Zig › Part 12. Allocators and Memory Management ›

Fixed Buffer Allocator

A fixed buffer allocator gives memory from a buffer you already own.

Writes › Book › Zig › Part 12. Allocators and Memory Management ›

Page Allocator

The page allocator asks the operating system for memory directly.

Writes › Book › Zig › Part 12. Allocators and Memory Management ›

Custom Allocators

A custom allocator is an allocator you design for a specific memory policy.

Writes › Book › Zig › Part 12. Allocators and Memory Management ›

Allocation Failure Handling

Allocation can fail.

Writes › Book › Zig › Part 12. Allocators and Memory Management ›

Memory Leak Detection

A memory leak happens when a program allocates memory and then loses the ability to free it.

Writes › Book › Zig › Part 12. Allocators and Memory Management ›

Lifetime Management

Memory lifetime means:

Writes › Book › Zig › Part 12. Allocators and Memory Management ›

Building Allocation-Friendly APIs

An allocation-friendly API makes memory behavior clear to the caller.