The realloc function changes the size of an allocated memory block. The memblock argument points to the beginning of the memory block. If memblock is NULL, realloc behaves the same way as malloc and allocates a new block of size bytes. If memblock is not NULL, it should be a pointer returned by a previous call to calloc, malloc, or realloc.
The size argument gives the new size of the block, in bytes. The contents of the block are unchanged up to the shorter of the new and old sizes, although the new block can be in a different location. Because the new block can be in a new memory location, the pointer returned by realloc is not guaranteed to be the pointer passed through the memblock argument. realloc does not zero newly allocated memory in the case of buffer growth.
realloc sets errno to ENOMEM if the memory allocation fails or if the amount of memory requested exceeds _HEAP_MAXREQ. For information on this and other error codes, see errno, _doserrno, _sys_errlist, and _sys_nerr.
realloccalls mallocin order to use the C++ _set_new_mode function to set the new handler mode. The new handler mode indicates whether, on failure, malloc is to call the new handler routine as set by _set_new_handler. By default, malloc does not call the new handler routine on failure to allocate memory. You can override this default behavior so that, when realloc fails to allocate memory, malloc calls the new handler routine in the same way that the new operator does when it fails for the same reason. To override the default, call
early in ones program, or link with NEWMODE.OBJ (see Link Options).
When the application is linked with a debug version of the C run-time libraries, realloc resolves to _realloc_dbg. For more information about how the heap is managed during the debugging process, see The CRT Debug Heap.
realloc is marked __declspec(noalias) and __declspec(restrict), meaning that the function is guaranteed not to modify global variables, and that the pointer returned is not aliased. For more information, see noalias and restrict.