This topic provides a brief comparison of the following memory allocation methods:
- CoTaskMemAlloc
- GlobalAlloc
- HeapAlloc
- LocalAlloc
- malloc
- new
- VirtualAlloc
The following functions are equivalent: GlobalAlloc, LocalAlloc, and HeapAlloc with the handle returned by the GetProcessHeap function.
The VirtualAlloc function allows you to specify additional options for memory allocation. However, its allocations use a page granularity, so using VirtualAlloc can result in higher memory usage.
The malloc function has the disadvantage of being run-time dependent. The new operator has the disadvantage of being compiler dependent and language dependent.
The CoTaskMemAlloc function has the advantage of working well in either C, C++, or Visual Basic. It is also the only way to share memory in a COM-based application, since MIDL uses CoTaskMemAlloc and CoTaskMemFree to marshal memory.
