CEIT is a superset of the C programming language that introduces custom abstractions for improved safety, ease of use, and efficiency. It builds on the power and simplicity of C while offering additional features to enhance the development experience. In this section, we will focus on the Memory system of CEIT, which is designed for managing memory allocations with custom structures and utilities.
The memory system in CEIT is based on custom memory chunk management, providing finer control over memory allocation and deallocation. It introduces two key structures:
The Memory structure represents a block of memory allocated from a memory chunk. Each Memory block contains metadata that helps manage the memory allocation. The structure consists of the following fields:
- name: A string representing the name of the memory block (for easy reference).
- size: The size of the memory block in bytes.
- is_free: A flag indicating whether the memory block is free (
1for free,0for allocated). - next: A pointer to the next memory block in the list (to form a linked list of memory blocks).
- data: A flexible array for storing the actual data allocated to the memory block.
The Memchunk structure represents a larger memory region from which smaller memory blocks (Memory) are allocated. It acts as a "container" for multiple memory blocks. The fields in Memchunk include:
- name: A string representing the name of the memory chunk.
- total_size: The total size of the memory chunk in bytes.
- memory_pool: A pointer to the head of the linked list of
Memoryblocks within the chunk. - used_memory: The total amount of memory used in the chunk (in bytes).
- free_memory: The total amount of free memory left in the chunk (in bytes).
- next: A pointer to the next
Memchunkin a chain (for supporting multiple chunks).
CEIT offers a set of functions to allocate, manage, and free memory blocks from Memchunk structures:
-
Initialization (
memc_init):- This function creates and initializes a new
Memchunkwith the given name and total size. It sets up a linked list ofMemoryblocks, all of which are initially free.
- This function creates and initializes a new
-
Allocation (
memory_alloc):- The
memory_allocfunction searches for the best-fit free memory block in aMemchunkand allocates it. If the block is large enough, it can be split into smaller blocks. The allocation process also updates theMemchunk's used and free memory statistics.
- The
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Writing Data (
memory_write):- Data can be written into a memory block using
memory_write. If the size is specified as0, it will automatically calculate the size based on the type of data, such as string length.
- Data can be written into a memory block using
-
Reading Data (
memory_read):- Data can be read from a memory block into a buffer using
memory_read.
- Data can be read from a memory block into a buffer using
-
Freeing Memory (
memory_free):- When a memory block is no longer needed, it can be freed using
memory_free. This function marks the block as free and updates theMemchunk's memory usage statistics. Adjacent free blocks are coalesced to form larger free regions, reducing fragmentation.
- When a memory block is no longer needed, it can be freed using
-
Deallocation (
memc_dealloc):- The
memc_deallocfunction deallocates aMemchunk, freeing all memory blocks contained within it. It is important to ensure that all memory blocks within aMemchunkare freed before calling this function to avoid memory leaks or invalid memory access.
- The
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Cleanup (
mem_clr):mem_clris a utility that automatically cleans up all memory blocks and deallocates allMemchunkstructures from the global memory chunk list.
This custom memory management system in CEIT provides developers with more granular control over memory operations, making it suitable for applications where memory allocation needs to be tightly controlled.
More fine utilities are in development and we are aiming to turn this into a whole superset of C programming language with a lot of useful features like tools to debug , analyse , possibly fix and warn users about there code. along with this more utilities will be added to the library itself like printing , better input , better conditions possibly and so on. SO stay tuned and watch this space :3
this project is under the GLP V3 License and can be found here