[Mono-devel-list] reading char * from extern function

[Marcus]

Having the runtime automatically free the C-string seems very dangerous.  Some 
functions might return a pointer to a string but also store the pointer 
elsewhere expecting that the string will remain allocated. Even worse, it's 
possible for a function to return a pointer to a statically-allocated string. 
(What happens in this case when the runtime tries to free the string?)

There is also a question about whether it is legal to mix malloc/free with the 
glib equivalents. (Last I asked, I could not get a definite answer.)



tring was allocated using malloc, using some glib allocation function, or 

On Thursday 22 May 2003 3:27 am, dietmar wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 09:31, md at mt.web.id wrote:
> > situation:
> > I have a C library. One of it's function is:
> >
> > char * some_func(int param, const char * param2) {
> > the next question is: should I free() the retval? if yes, how to do 
> > that?

> I guess the runtime should free the string for you, but we don't do that
> currently. Somebody should test how MS handles this.