On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 6:53 AM, Stewart, Robert <Robert.Stewart@sig.com>wrote:
Gennadiy Rozental wrote On Saturday, June 06, 2009 3:15 AM
I also have following functions in this module:
debugger_break - cause program to break execution in debugger at call point
[snip]
break_memory_alloc - cause program to break execution in debugger at specific allocation point
The function name connotes causing the following memory allocation(s) to fail, which is useful in its own right for testing error handling.
How is break_memory_alloc() different from debugger_break() in practical terms? IOW, if break_memory_alloc() causes a break at the next allocation, it doesn't seem any different than preceding the allocation call with debugger_break().
The user can't control when the next allocation will happen though. He may be in a multi-threaded environment and the next allocation might happen from another thread. It might even happen because you corrupt some memory which accidentally invokes malloc or new via a bogus function pointer which just happens to point there (unlikely, though). So it definitely provides functionality to the user not possible without a separate function for it.