alt Hacker Newslike many C functions you must remember that C is not low level, you won’t learn how memory is allocated by inspecting malloc() anymore than you would learn how characters are printed to the screen by reading printf() or how a file is written by reading write().
you will only learn about the thin or heavy wrapper that C is responsible for, the real magic is happening in the kernel and the device firmware
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Someone • today at 2:35 PM
Malloc needs the kernel to obtain memory, but in any reasonable implementation (you do not want to make a syscall for every malloc and free) is mostly user space, and studying that will tell you a lot about how your malloc works.
Disagree, I found malloc source useful, and writing a toy allocator especially useful because you learn about the brk() syscall which is a great breadcrumb into kernel land and a great bridge to connect the memory mapping lessons from computer architecture with application code.