About Libc - the Standard C Library

The C standard library, often referred to as libc, is a standard library for the C programming language. It provides a collection of functions and macros that are widely used in C programs. The functions mentioned in this memo series, such as printf, strcpy, and memmove, are part of the libc.

You may have seen header such “stdio.h”, “math.h” and “thread.h” so far in this class. The C library provides various modules and headers that contain functions for different purposes, including string manipulation, memory operations, file I/O, time handling, and more. These functions are typically implemented in C and are designed to be portable across different platforms and operating systems to provide convenient and efficient ways to perform those tasks, abstracting away the low-level details of memory management and data manipulation.

The most common libc in all major Linux distributions is glibc, The GNU C Library. The code is highly optimized thus not suitable for education purpose. Alternatively, Musl libc prioritizes simplicity, performance, and standards compliance while providing a minimal and highly compatible implementation of C library functions, therefore widely used in embedded systems.

Familiarize yourself with how libc works paves the way to a deeper understanding of operating systems and the language itself.

Functions Families

You will often see functions with similar names in the C library. Functions with the “s-“ prefix generally deal with strings, while “mem-” is related to memory operations. Examples:

char *strcpy(char *dest, const char *src); // copies one string to another
int strcmp(const char *s1, const char *s2); // compares two strings
void *memcpy(void *dest, const void *src, size_t n);  // copies a block of memory from one location to another
int memcmp(const void *s1, const void *s2, size_t n); // compares two blocks of memory
void *memmove(void *dest, const void *src, size_t n); // similar to memcpy(), but allows overlapping memory block

Note how similar their signatures are. The behavior of string and memory variants differ in several ways, primarily in handling the null byte: string functions will return upon hitting a ‘\0’. As an exercise, research the behavior of following functions in printf family:

int printf(const char *restrict format, ...);
int fprintf(FILE *restrict stream, const char *restrict format, ...);
int snprintf(char *restrict s, size_t n, const char *restrict format, ...);
int sprintf(char *restrict s, const char *restrict format, ...);

Replacing malloc

Reference

The GNU C Library allows for the replacement of its default malloc implementation with an alternative allocator that follows the same interface. Some memory debuggers work this way by having a alternative malloc and free to track allocation history.

This replacement can be achieved for dynamically linked programs through ELF symbol interposition, using shared object dependencies or LD_PRELOAD. For statically linked programs, the custom malloc library needs to be linked before linking against libc.a, either explicitly or implicitly.

To ensure proper functioning of the GNU C Library, a minimum set of functions must be provided by the custom malloc implementation. These functions include malloc, free, calloc, and realloc. These specific malloc-related functions are essential for the proper operation of the GNU C Library.