unsigned char alloc and free issue - objective-c

Question

I'm confused about one strange thing....I have an unsigned char array.... I allocate it using calloc and record some bytes data in it... but when I free this unsigned char and allocate it again, I see that it reserves the same address in memory which was allocated previous time. I understand why....But I cannot understand why the data that I'm trying to write there second time is not written...There is written the data that was written first time....Can anybody explain me this???????
unsigned char *rawData = (unsigned char*) calloc(height * width * 4, sizeof(unsigned char));
This is how I allocate it....
Actually my problem is that because of this allocation , which happens once every 2 secs I have memory leak...But when I try to free the allocated memory sector happens thing described above....:(
Please if anybody can help me....I would be so glad...
Here is the code...
- (unsigned char*) createBitmapContext:(UIImage*)anImage{
CGImageRef imageRef = [anImage CGImage];
NSUInteger width = CGImageGetWidth(imageRef);
NSUInteger height = CGImageGetHeight(imageRef);
CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
unsigned char *rawData = (unsigned char*) calloc(height * width * 4, sizeof(unsigned char));
bytesPerPixel = 4;
bytesPerRow = bytesPerPixel * width;
NSUInteger bitsPerComponent = 8;
CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(rawData, width, height,
bitsPerComponent, bytesPerRow, colorSpace,
kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast | kCGBitmapByteOrder32Big);
CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);
CGContextDrawImage(context, CGRectMake(0, 0, width, height), imageRef);
CGContextRelease(context);
imageRef=nil;
return rawData; }
in this code there is no the part where I free(rawData), and because I cannot free it inside this method I tried to define rawData globally and free it after calling this method...but nothing interesting....
Please if anybody can help me....I would be so glad...

Answer 1

Ok, so this method is rendering a UIImage into a freshly allocated byte buffer and returning the buffer to the caller. Since you're allocating it with calloc, it will be initialised to 0, then overwritten with the image contents.
when I free this unsigned char and allocate it again, I see that it reserves the same address in memory which was allocated previous time
Yes, there are no guarantees about the location of the buffer in memory. Assuming you call free() on the returned memory, requesting the exact same size is quite likely to give you the same buffer back. But - how are you verifying the contents are not written over a second time? What is in the buffer?
my problem is that because of this allocation , which happens once every 2 secs I have memory leak...But when I try to free the allocated memory sector happens thing described above....:(
If there is a leak, it is likely in the code that calls this method, since there is no obvious leakage here. The semantics are obviously such that the caller is responsible for freeing the buffer. So how is that done?
Also, are you verifying that the CGBitmapContext is being correctly created? It is possible that some creation flags or parameters may result in an error. So add a check for context being valid (at least not nil). That could explain why the content is not being overwritten.
One easy way to ensure your memory is being freshly updated is to write your own data to it. You could fill the buffer with a counter, and verify this outside the method. For example, just before you return rawData:
static unsigned updateCounter = 0;
memset(rawData, updateCounter & 0xff, width*height*4);
This will cycle through writing 0-255 into the buffer, which you can easily verify.
Another thing - what are you trying to achieve with this code? There might be an easier way to achieve what you're trying to achieve. Returning bare buffers devoid of metadata is not necessarily the best way to manage your images.

Answer 2

So guys I solved this issue...First thing I've changed createBitmapContext method to this
- (void) createBitmapContext:(UIImage*)anImage andRawData:(unsigned char *)theRawData{
CGImageRef imageRef = [anImage CGImage];
NSUInteger width = CGImageGetWidth(imageRef);
NSUInteger height = CGImageGetHeight(imageRef);
CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
// unsigned char *rawData = (unsigned char*) calloc(height * width * 4, sizeof(unsigned char));
bytesPerPixel = 4;
bytesPerRow = bytesPerPixel * width;
NSUInteger bitsPerComponent = 8;
CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(theRawData, width, height,
bitsPerComponent, bytesPerRow, colorSpace,
kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast | kCGBitmapByteOrder32Big);
CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);
CGContextDrawImage(context, CGRectMake(0, 0, width, height), imageRef);
CGContextRelease(context);
imageRef=nil;
// return theRawData;}
then...besides this I missed the part where I assign newRawData to oldRawData and by this I was having two pointers to the same memory address...So from here came the issue... I changed this assignment part to this memcpy(rawDataForOldImage, rawDataForNewImage,newCapturedImage.size.width*newCapturedImage.size.height*4); and here the problem is solved....Thanks to all