I wrote a minimal memory allocator in C
A fun toy memory allocator (not thread safe, that's a future TODO). I also wanted to explain how I approached it, so I also wrote a tutorial blog post (~20 minute read) covering the code which you can find the link to in the README.
I wrote a minimal memory allocator in C launched on November 23, 2025 with 137 votes, #217 of 9,796 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.
In plain words
This is a minimal memory allocator written in C, designed as an educational tool rather than for production use. It demonstrates core memory allocation concepts through working code accompanied by a detailed tutorial blog post explaining the implementation approach. The allocator is not thread-safe, with thread safety noted as a future enhancement. It is intended for developers and students interested in understanding how memory allocation works at a low level.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
a minimal memory allocator in C. Contribute to t9nzin/memory development by creating an account on GitHub.
A memory allocator written from scratch using sbrk for small allocations and mmap for large allocations. It includes optimizations like block splitting to reduce fragmentation and coalescing to merge adjacent free blocks. Please note that this allocator is not thread-safe . Concurrent calls to malloc/free/realloc will cause undefined behavior. I've also written a blog post (~20 minute read) explaining step by step the process behind writing this memory allocator project, if that's of interest, you can read it here! #include "allocator.h" Compile your program with the library: gcc -I./include examples/my_program.c -L./build -lallocator -o my_program Run the compiled program ./my_program…from github.com
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