Test code for custom malloc

Question

I've been working on a custom malloc where the test code is the following.

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include "../tst.h"
#include "../brk.h"
#include <time.h>
/* returns an array of arrays of char*, all of which NULL */
char ***alloc_matrix(unsigned rows, unsigned columns) {
    char ***matrix = malloc(rows * sizeof(char **));
    unsigned row = 0;
    unsigned column = 0;
    if (!matrix) abort();

    for (row = 0; row < rows; row++) {
        matrix[row] = calloc(columns, sizeof(char *));
        if (!matrix[row]) abort();
        for (column = 0; column < columns; column++) {
            matrix[row][column] = NULL;
        }
    }
    return matrix;
}

/* deallocates an array of arrays of char*, calling free() on each */
void free_matrix(char ***matrix, unsigned rows, unsigned columns) {
    unsigned row = 0;
    unsigned column = 0;
    for (row = 0; row < rows; row++) {
        for (column = 0; column < columns; column++) {
            /*    printf("column %d row %d\n", column, row);*/
            free(matrix[row][column]);
        }
        free(matrix[row]);
    }
    free(matrix);
}


int main(int agrc, char **argv) {
     int i;
    srand(time(NULL));
    int randomnumber;
    int size = 1024;
    void *p[size];
    for (i = 0; i < size; i++) {
        randomnumber = rand() % 10;
        p[i] = malloc(1024 * 1024 * randomnumber);
    }

    for (i = size-1; i >= 0; i--) {
        free(p[i]);
    }

    int x = 1024;
    char *** matrix = alloc_matrix(x, x);
    free_matrix(matrix, x, x);
    return (0);
}

The code compiles and runs cleanly.

developer@1604:~/proj/openmalloc/overhead$ gcc gigtest.c developer@1604:~/proj/openmalloc/overhead$ ./a.out

But how can I improve it? I would like to make it easier to test the thing (my next work should be to add multithreading to the malloc implementation).

Should I use a testing framework instead?

Answer 1

This code is very easy to understand, which is great! I like that you used full words for the variable names rather than abbreviating everything to single character names.

Don't Abort

In alloc_matrix(), if there is a failure to allocate memory, it calls abort(). This is going to make it very difficult to test! If it attempts to allocate and fails, it aborts the test. Usually a test will return success or failure. This is an important distinction because you may write tests that should fail to test the failure paths of your code.

Proper Types

I would change the types of the argument to this:

char*** alloc_matrix(const size_t rows, const size_t columns);

I made them all const because the function doesn't change their values. I also made them size_t which is the appropriate type to use when you want to represent a size.

More Tests

You should add some more tests. As mentioned above, you need to test cases that should fail, such as allocating a block that's the maximum 64-bit value (for example malloc(ULLONG_MAX);).

You should also test things like alignment. Many platforms have strict byte alignment requirements. For example, pointers can usually not have an odd start address, and often must be 4-byte, 8-byte, or 16-byte aligned. You may need to check the specifics of the platform you're testing on.