What about the free store? :)

OpenGL OpenGL: Basic Coding
1

I hope this isn’t too off topic…

void main()
{
float bitmapA[200][200][32/8];
float bitmapB[200][200][32/8];
}

This program crashes unless the second line is commented out. So I guess I need to allocate the memory somehow before I use it, but how?

2

These variables are allocated in the stack, long variables is better allocated in the heap (whith malloc function) or like global variables (out a function).

3

Thanks, globalizing those arrays fixes that crash and my real program is running fine now.

None of my C books seem to have explanations of malloc, what kind of book would go into that? Or maybe it would be in the index under something other than allocating or memory?

4

Are your books really C books or could they be C++ books? malloc/free is basically the C equivalent to the C++ new/delete operators.

5

Simply ‘malloc’ takes one parameter that specifies the ammount of memory to allocate and returns a pointer to the memory (you need to type-cast this). ‘free’ takes a pointer to some malloc’d memory.
eg to allocate and free an array of 100 ints:


// pointer for the memory
int  *pIntArray;

// allocate the memory
pIntArray = ( int* ) malloc( sizeof(int) * 100 );
// some code that uses the memory

// Now free the memory
free( pIntArray );
6

Well Deiussum you’re right, I’m all setup for C++ here. Thanks Anon. I’ve even used the new/delete operators before but I don’t think I’ve ever created multi-dimensional arrays. I’d expect it to work like this:

float* bmpA = new float [200][200];

But that line won’t compile with that second dimension on there.

7 
float* bmpA = new float [200][200];

is really double in-direction, ie. a pointer to a pointer (to a value), so at the very least you’d need float **bmpA. But that won’t compile, either.

What you’ll need to do is allocate the array of pointers, and THEN the data:

float **bmp;

bmp=new float*[200];
for(int t=0; t<200; t++)
bmp[t]=new float[200];

ie. you’re allocating one reference at a time.

hope this helps,

cheers,
John

8

Another thing:

you MIGHT be better off to “manually” compress your double indirection into a single large vector. the store for bmp described above is NOT contiguous, and it can’t easily be cast to a float* that opengl wants when you’re binding texture.

explaining this further:

float **bmp is a pointer to a pointer to a float. so, bmp points to an ARRAY of pointers. this array is contiguous, but each element in that array points to ANOTHER array, this time of floats. These additional arrays are not necessarily in a single block. ie. in the above example, bmp[1]-bmp[0] is not necessarily 200*sizeof(float).

you might find it more useful to “pack” the image into a vector:

float *bmp=new float[200*200];
bmp[x+y*200]=blah; /* set pixel (x,y) */

cheers,
John

9

that is correct. In face bmp[0]-bmp[1] will be sizeof(float *)

10

er bmp[1]-bmp[0] will be sizeof(float *)

11

er again

rather the difference between the
adress of bmp[1] (a float pointer)
and the address of bmp[0] (also a float pointer) will be sizeof(float *)

12

well, yes. that IS true for C, but my point was that some systems do magiclaly pack double dimension arrays so into row or column major order, so

m[5][5]=
ABCDEabcdeABCDEabcdeABCDE

so in THISE case you can compute m[1]-m[0]==5*sizeof(whatever) (for column major storage). that was my point: all the data is in a contigious block.

er, what i meant before was *bmp[1]-bmp[0] not being 200sizeof. oops =)

cheers,
John

[This message has been edited by john (edited 05-08-2001).]