- 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
- 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 re-
- fresh(3x). There are also chunks of memory held for per-
- formance reasons. 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 func-
- tions to free all of the memory allocated by the ncurses
- library.
-
- 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 used to simplify analysis of memory leaks in the
+ ncurses library.
+
+ Any implementation of curses must not free the memory associated with a
+ screen, since (even after calling endwin(3x)), 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
+ applications 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.
+
+ Some of the functions are named with a "_nc_" prefix because they are
+ not intended 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.
+ Simply 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.
+
+ The functions prefixed "_nc" are normally not available; they must be
+ configured into the library at build time using the --disable-leaks
+ option. That compiles-in code that frees memory that normally would
+ not be freed.
+
+ The exit_curses and exit_terminfo functions call _nc_free_and_exit and
+ _nc_free_tinfo if the library is configured to support memory-leak
+ checking. If the library is not configured to support memory-leak
+ checking, they simply call exit.
- These functions are not part of the XSI interface.
+ These functions are not part of X/Open Curses; nor do other
+ implementations of curses provide a similar feature.
+
+ In any implementation of X/Open Curses, an application can free part of
+ the memory allocated by curses:
+
+ o The portable part of exit_curses can be freed using delscreen,
+ passing the SCREEN pointer returned by newterm.
+
+ In some implementations, there is a global variable sp which could
+ be used, e.g., if the screen were only initialized using initscr.
+
+ o The portable part of exit_terminfo can be freed using del_curterm.
+
+ In this case, there is a global variable cur_term which can be used
+ as parameter.