Understand the principles and best practices of Golang function memory management

The memory management of Golang functions follows stack allocation of parameters and local variables, and heap allocation of dynamically allocated data. Best practices include reducing stack allocations, using heap allocations efficiently, using pointers sparingly, avoiding allocations in loops, and using pass-by-value for structures of known size. A practical case demonstrates how to use value passing in the appendToList() function to avoid heap allocation leaks.

Golang function memory management analysis and best practices

Principles of function memory management

Memory allocation in Golang functions follows the following rules:

• The parameters and local variables of the function are stored on the stack.
• The stack is a first-in, last-out (LIFO) data structure that allocates memory when a function enters and releases it when it exits.
• Heap memory is used to store dynamically allocated data and is allocated through the new keyword.
• Escape analysis determines whether the variable needs to be allocated on the heap because it will be used outside the function.

Best Practices

• #Reduce stack allocation: Use local variables and value types as much as possible to reduce the size of stack allocation and times.
• Use heap allocation efficiently: Only perform heap allocation when necessary and release unused memory as early as possible to avoid memory leaks.
• Use pointers with caution: Pointers will point to data on the heap, and the life cycle of the pointers needs to be carefully managed to avoid wild pointers and memory leaks.
• Avoid allocation in loops: Allocating memory in loops will frequently trigger garbage collection and reduce performance. Try to move allocations outside of loops.
• Use value passing for structures with known size: For structures with known size, using value passing can avoid unnecessary heap allocation.

Practical case

Consider the following function:

func appendToList(list []int, value int) []int {
    return append(list, value)
}

When this function is called, the following happens:

• list The parameter is a pointer to a slice on the heap.
• append() The function returns a new slice with new heap memory allocated.
• The returned slice does not escape outside the function, so heap allocations are not tracked.

To avoid this problem, you can change []int to a value type:

func appendToList(list []int, value int) []int {
    newArray := make([]int, len(list)+1)
    copy(newArray, list)
    newArray[len(list)] = value
    return newArray
}

In this case, the new slice is allocated on the stack , and released when the function returns, avoiding memory leaks.

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