C++ Memory management Placement new
Example
There are situations when we don't want to rely upon Free Store for allocating memory and we want to use custom memory allocations using new.
For these situations we can use Placement New, where we can tell `new' operator to allocate memory from a pre-allocated memory location
For example
int a4byteInteger;
char *a4byteChar = new (&a4byteInteger) char[4];
In this example, the memory pointed by a4byteChar is 4 byte allocated to 'stack' via integer variable a4byteInteger.
The benefit of this kind of memory allocation is the fact that programmers control the allocation. In the example above, since a4byteInteger is allocated on stack, we don't need to make an explicit call to 'delete a4byteChar`.
Same behavior can be achieved for dynamic allocated memory also. For example
int *a8byteDynamicInteger = new int[2];
char *a8byteChar = new (a8byteDynamicInteger) char[8];
In this case, the memory pointer by a8byteChar will be referring to dynamic memory allocated by a8byteDynamicInteger. In this case however, we need to explicitly calldelete a8byteDynamicInteger to release the memory
Another example for C++ Class
struct ComplexType {
int a;
ComplexType() : a(0) {}
~ComplexType() {}
};
int main() {
char* dynArray = new char[256];
//Calls ComplexType's constructor to initialize memory as a ComplexType
new((void*)dynArray) ComplexType();
//Clean up memory once we're done
reinterpret_cast<ComplexType*>(dynArray)->~ComplexType();
delete[] dynArray;
//Stack memory can also be used with placement new
alignas(ComplexType) char localArray[256]; //alignas() available since C++11
new((void*)localArray) ComplexType();
//Only need to call the destructor for stack memory
reinterpret_cast<ComplexType*>(localArray)->~ComplexType();
return 0;
}
