4.7 Memory Handling

MPFR functions may create caches, e.g., when computing constants such as Pi, either because the user has called a function like mpfr_const_pi directly or because such a function was called internally by the MPFR library itself to compute some other function.

At any time, the user can free the various caches with mpfr_free_cache. It is strongly advised to do that before terminating a thread, or before exiting when using tools like ‘valgrind’ (to avoid memory leaks being reported).

MPFR internal data such as flags, the exponent range, the default precision and rounding mode, and caches (i.e., data that are not accessed via parameters) are either global (if MPFR has not been compiled as thread safe) or per-thread (thread local storage, TLS). The initial values of TLS data after a thread is created entirely depend on the compiler and thread implementation (MPFR simply does a conventional variable initialization, the variables being declared with an implementation-defined TLS specifier).