Memory Management

native.memory provides capabilities for manual heap memory management. Please be mindful of memory leaks; manually allocated memory must be manually freed.

Allocate Memory (alloc)

Allocates a memory block of the specified size.

native.memory.alloc(size) -> LuaPointer

• Parameters: size (number) —— Number of bytes.
• Returns: LuaPointer object. If size <= 0, returns nil or a null pointer object.

Example:

local ptr = native.memory.alloc(1024) -- Allocate 1KB
if ptr.is_null() then
    log("Memory allocation failed")
end

Allocate String Memory (alloc_utf8_string)

Allocates a block of memory and writes the Lua string into it encoded as UTF-8, automatically appending \0 at the end.

native.memory.alloc_utf8_string(str) -> LuaPointer

• Parameters: str (string) —— Content.
• Returns: LuaPointer pointing to the start address of the string.

Example:

local str_ptr = native.memory.alloc_utf8_string("Hello World")
-- Memory content: 48 65 6C 6C 6F 20 57 6F 72 6C 64 00

Free Memory (free)

Frees memory allocated by the alloc family of functions.

native.memory.free(ptr)

• Parameters: ptr (LuaPointer | number) —— The start address of the memory to free.

Warning:

1. Only free memory allocated by yourself.
2. Do not double free the same memory block.
3. Do not free unallocated wild pointers.

Example:

local buf = native.memory.alloc(16)
-- Use buf ...
native.memory.free(buf)