- These functions are used to simplify analysis of memory
- leaks in the ncurses library. They are normally not
- available; they must be configured into the library at
- build time using the --disable-leaks option. That com-
- piles-in code that frees memory that normally would not be
+ These functions are used to simplify analysis of memory leaks in the
+ ncurses library. They are normally not available; they must be config-
+ ured into the library at build time using the --disable-leaks option.
+ That compiles-in code that frees memory that normally would not be
freed.
- Any implementation of curses must not free the memory as-
- sociated with a screen, since (even after calling endwin),
- it must be available for use in the next call to refresh.
- There are also chunks of memory held for performance rea-
- sons. That makes it hard to analyze curses applications
- for memory leaks. To work around this, one can build a
- debugging version of the ncurses library which frees those
- chunks which it can, and provides these functions to free
- all of the memory allocated by the ncurses library.
+ Any implementation of curses must not free the memory associated with a
+ screen, since (even after calling endwin), it must be available for use
+ in the next call to refresh(3x). There are also chunks of memory held
+ for performance reasons. That makes it hard to analyze curses applica-
+ tions for memory leaks. When using the specially configured debugging
+ version of the ncurses library, applications can call functions which
+ free those chunks of memory, simplifying the process of memory-leak
+ checking.
- The _nc_free_and_exit function is the preferred one since
- some of the memory which is freed may be required for the
- application to continue running. Its parameter is the
- code to pass to the exit routine.
+ These functions are named with a "_nc_" prefix because they are not in-
+ tended for use in the non-debugging library:
+
+ _nc_freeall
+ This frees (almost) all of the memory allocated by ncurses.
+
+ _nc_free_and_exit
+ This frees the memory allocated by ncurses (like _nc_freeall), and
+ exits the program. It is preferred over _nc_freeall since some of
+ that memory may be required to keep the application running. Sim-
+ ply exiting (with the given exit-code) is safer.
+
+ _nc_free_tinfo
+ Use this function if only the low-level terminfo functions (and
+ corresponding library) are used. Like _nc_free_and_exit, it exits
+ the program after freeing memory.
- These functions are not part of the XSI interface.
+ These functions are not part of X/Open Curses; nor do other implementa-
+ tions of curses provide a similar feature.