3.4.2 Freeing a Persistent Memory Block Explicitly

Use the pmmFree() or pmmFreeAll() function to explicitly free a persistent memory block. The explicit freeing of a given memory block can be performed by any actor, not necessarily the actor which originally allocated the block. It is the programmer's responsibility to ensure that the persistent memory block which will be freed is no longer in use.

Use pmmFree() to free a single memory block identified by a PmmName:

#include <chPmm.h>
int pmmFree( PmmName	*name )

Use pmmFreeAll() to free a group of persistent memory blocks which were allocated with the same deletion key. The deletion key for a persistent memory block is specified when the block is allocated with pmmAllocate().

#include <chPmm.h> 
int pmmFreeAll( PmmDelKey    delkey,
                size_t       delKeySize );

A typical use of a deletion key is to mark all persistent memory blocks used by an actor or a group of actors with the same key, and then have a separate, independent actor that frees all the blocks when a particular job is completed or a particular event occurs. For example, the "hello world" example uses pmmFree() to free the single memory block it allocates before it terminates. If the "hello world" actor did not free its own persistent memory block, the following call to pmmFreeAll() from another actor would free the block, along with any other blocks marked with the deletion key HR_GROUP.

pmmFreeAll( HR_GROUP, sizeof(HR_GROUP) );