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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
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+</style><title>Memory Management</title></head><body bgcolor="#8b7765" text="#000000" link="#000000" vlink="#000000"><table border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" align="center"><tr><td width="120"><a href="http://swpat.ffii.org/"><img src="epatents.png" alt="Action against software patents" /></a></td><td width="180"><a href="http://www.gnome.org/"><img src="gnome2.png" alt="Gnome2 Logo" /></a><a href="http://www.w3.org/Status"><img src="w3c.png" alt="W3C Logo" /></a><a href="http://www.redhat.com/"><img src="redhat.gif" alt="Red Hat Logo" /></a><div align="left"><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/"><img src="Libxml2-Logo-180x168.gif" alt="Made with Libxml2 Logo" /></a></div></td><td><table border="0" width="90%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" align="center" bgcolor="#000000"><tr><td><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3" bgcolor="#fffacd"><tr><td align="center"><h1>The XML C parser and toolkit of Gnome</h1><h2>Memory Management</h2></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" width="100%" align="center"><tr><td bgcolor="#8b7765"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" width="100%"><tr><td valign="top" width="200" bgcolor="#8b7765"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1" width="100%" bgcolor="#000000"><tr><td><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3"><tr><td colspan="1" bgcolor="#eecfa1" align="center"><center><b>Developer Menu</b></center></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#fffacd"><form action="search.php" enctype="application/x-www-form-urlencoded" method="get"><input name="query" type="text" size="20" value="" /><input name="submit" type="submit" value="Search ..." /></form><ul><li><a href="index.html" style="font-weight:bold">Main Menu</a></li><li><a href="examples/index.html" style="font-weight:bold">Code Examples</a></li><li><a href="guidelines.html">XML Guidelines</a></li><li><a href="tutorial/index.html">Tutorial</a></li><li><a href="xmlreader.html">The Reader Interface</a></li><li><a href="XSLT.html">XSLT</a></li><li><a href="python.html">Python and bindings</a></li><li><a href="architecture.html">libxml2 architecture</a></li><li><a href="tree.html">The tree output</a></li><li><a href="interface.html">The SAX interface</a></li><li><a href="xmlmem.html">Memory Management</a></li><li><a href="xmlio.html">I/O Interfaces</a></li><li><a href="library.html">The parser interfaces</a></li><li><a href="entities.html">Entities or no entities</a></li><li><a href="namespaces.html">Namespaces</a></li><li><a href="upgrade.html">Upgrading 1.x code</a></li><li><a href="threads.html">Thread safety</a></li><li><a href="DOM.html">DOM Principles</a></li><li><a href="example.html">A real example</a></li><li><a href="xml.html">flat page</a>, <a href="site.xsl">stylesheet</a></li></ul></td></tr></table><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3"><tr><td colspan="1" bgcolor="#eecfa1" align="center"><center><b>API Indexes</b></center></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#fffacd"><ul><li><a href="APIchunk0.html">Alphabetic</a></li><li><a href="APIconstructors.html">Constructors</a></li><li><a href="APIfunctions.html">Functions/Types</a></li><li><a href="APIfiles.html">Modules</a></li><li><a href="APIsymbols.html">Symbols</a></li></ul></td></tr></table><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3"><tr><td colspan="1" bgcolor="#eecfa1" align="center"><center><b>Related links</b></center></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#fffacd"><ul><li><a href="http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/">Mail archive</a></li><li><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/">XSLT libxslt</a></li><li><a href="http://phd.cs.unibo.it/gdome2/">DOM gdome2</a></li><li><a href="http://www.aleksey.com/xmlsec/">XML-DSig xmlsec</a></li><li><a href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/">FTP</a></li><li><a href="http://www.zlatkovic.com/projects/libxml/">Windows binaries</a></li><li><a href="http://garypennington.net/libxml2/">Solaris binaries</a></li><li><a href="http://www.zveno.com/open_source/libxml2xslt.html">MacOsX binaries</a></li><li><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/libxml2-pas/">Pascal bindings</a></li><li><a href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?product=libxml2">Bug Tracker</a></li></ul></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td><td valign="top" bgcolor="#8b7765"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1" width="100%"><tr><td><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1" width="100%" bgcolor="#000000"><tr><td><table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" width="100%"><tr><td bgcolor="#fffacd"><p>Table of Content:</p><ol><li><a href="#General3">General overview</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#setting">Setting libxml2 set of memory routines</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#cleanup">Cleaning up after parsing</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#Debugging">Debugging routines</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#General4">General memory requirements</a></li>
+</ol><h3><a name="General3" id="General3">General overview</a></h3><p>The module <code><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-xmlmemory.html">xmlmemory.h</a></code>
+provides the interfaces to the libxml2 memory system:</p><ul><li>libxml2 does not use the libc memory allocator directly but xmlFree(),
+    xmlMalloc() and xmlRealloc()</li>
+  <li>those routines can be reallocated to a specific set of routine, by
+    default the libc ones i.e. free(), malloc() and realloc()</li>
+  <li>the xmlmemory.c module includes a set of debugging routine</li>
+</ul><h3><a name="setting" id="setting">Setting libxml2 set of memory routines</a></h3><p>It is sometimes useful to not use the default memory allocator, either for
+debugging, analysis or to implement a specific behaviour on memory management
+(like on embedded systems). Two function calls are available to do so:</p><ul><li><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-xmlmemory.html">xmlMemGet
+    ()</a> which return the current set of functions in use by the parser</li>
+  <li><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-xmlmemory.html">xmlMemSetup()</a>
+    which allow to set up a new set of memory allocation functions</li>
+</ul><p>Of course a call to xmlMemSetup() should probably be done before calling
+any other libxml2 routines (unless you are sure your allocations routines are
+compatibles).</p><h3><a name="cleanup" id="cleanup">Cleaning up after parsing</a></h3><p>Libxml2 is not stateless, there is a few set of memory structures needing
+allocation before the parser is fully functional (some encoding structures
+for example). This also mean that once parsing is finished there is a tiny
+amount of memory (a few hundred bytes) which can be recollected if you don't
+reuse the parser immediately:</p><ul><li><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-parser.html">xmlCleanupParser
+    ()</a> is a centralized routine to free the parsing states. Note that it
+    won't deallocate any produced tree if any (use the xmlFreeDoc() and
+    related routines for this).</li>
+  <li><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-parser.html">xmlInitParser
+    ()</a> is the dual routine allowing to preallocate the parsing state
+    which can be useful for example to avoid initialization reentrancy
+    problems when using libxml2 in multithreaded applications</li>
+</ul><p>Generally xmlCleanupParser() is safe, if needed the state will be rebuild
+at the next invocation of parser routines, but be careful of the consequences
+in multithreaded applications.</p><h3><a name="Debugging" id="Debugging">Debugging routines</a></h3><p>When configured using --with-mem-debug flag (off by default), libxml2 uses
+a set of memory allocation debugging routines keeping track of all allocated
+blocks and the location in the code where the routine was called. A couple of
+other debugging routines allow to dump the memory allocated infos to a file
+or call a specific routine when a given block number is allocated:</p><ul><li><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-xmlmemory.html">xmlMallocLoc()</a>
+    <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-xmlmemory.html">xmlReallocLoc()</a>
+    and <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-xmlmemory.html">xmlMemStrdupLoc()</a>
+    are the memory debugging replacement allocation routines</li>
+  <li><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-xmlmemory.html">xmlMemoryDump
+    ()</a> dumps all the informations about the allocated memory block lefts
+    in the <code>.memdump</code> file</li>
+</ul><p>When developing libxml2 memory debug is enabled, the tests programs call
+xmlMemoryDump () and the "make test" regression tests will check for any
+memory leak during the full regression test sequence, this helps a lot
+ensuring that libxml2  does not leak memory and bullet proof memory
+allocations use (some libc implementations are known to be far too permissive
+resulting in major portability problems!).</p><p>If the .memdump reports a leak, it displays the allocation function and
+also tries to give some informations about the content and structure of the
+allocated blocks left. This is sufficient in most cases to find the culprit,
+but not always. Assuming the allocation problem is reproducible, it is
+possible to find more easily:</p><ol><li>write down the block number xxxx not allocated</li>
+  <li>export the environment variable XML_MEM_BREAKPOINT=xxxx , the easiest
+    when using GDB is to simply give the command
+    <p><code>set environment XML_MEM_BREAKPOINT xxxx</code></p>
+    <p>before running the program.</p>
+  </li>
+  <li>run the program under a debugger and set a breakpoint on
+    xmlMallocBreakpoint() a specific function called when this precise block
+    is allocated</li>
+  <li>when the breakpoint is reached you can then do a fine analysis of the
+    allocation an step  to see the condition resulting in the missing
+    deallocation.</li>
+</ol><p>I used to use a commercial tool to debug libxml2 memory problems but after
+noticing that it was not detecting memory leaks that simple mechanism was
+used and proved extremely efficient until now. Lately I have also used <a href="http://developer.kde.org/~sewardj/">valgrind</a> with quite some
+success, it is tied to the i386 architecture since it works by emulating the
+processor and instruction set, it is slow but  extremely efficient, i.e. it
+spot memory usage errors in a very precise way.</p><h3><a name="General4" id="General4">General memory requirements</a></h3><p>How much libxml2 memory require ? It's hard to tell in average it depends
+of a number of things:</p><ul><li>the parser itself should work  in a fixed amount of memory, except for
+    information maintained about the stacks of names and  entities locations.
+    The I/O and encoding handlers will probably account for a few KBytes.
+    This is true for both the XML and HTML parser (though the HTML parser
+    need more state).</li>
+  <li>If you are generating the DOM tree then memory requirements will grow
+    nearly linear with the size of the data. In general for a balanced
+    textual document the internal memory requirement is about 4 times the
+    size of the UTF8 serialization of this document (example the XML-1.0
+    recommendation is a bit more of 150KBytes and takes 650KBytes of main
+    memory when parsed). Validation will add a amount of memory required for
+    maintaining the external Dtd state which should be linear with the
+    complexity of the content model defined by the Dtd</li>
+  <li>If you need to work with fixed memory requirements or don't need the
+    full DOM tree then using the <a href="xmlreader.html">xmlReader
+    interface</a> is probably the best way to proceed, it still allows to
+    validate or operate on subset of the tree if needed.</li>
+  <li>If you don't care about the advanced features of libxml2 like
+    validation, DOM, XPath or XPointer, don't use entities, need to work with
+    fixed memory requirements, and try to get the fastest parsing possible
+    then the SAX interface should be used, but it has known restrictions.</li>
+</ul><p></p><p><a href="bugs.html">Daniel Veillard</a></p></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></body></html>