Can't free sentinel terminated many item pointer

[gaba-gh0ul]

I am trying to understand sentinel terminated many item pointers and am running into an issue when trying to free the memory allocated with allocSentinel.

The relevant code is

const allocator = std.heap.page_allocator;

var str: [*:0]u8 = try allocator.allocSentinel(u8, 100, 0);
defer allocator.free(str);

When I run this I get this error

error: type '[*:0]u8' does not support field access
if (slice.len == 0 and std.meta.sentinel(Slice) == null) return &[0]u8{};

The code otherwise compiles if I removed the free statement, but then it creates a memory leak. I have tried to read through documentation but have not been able to make sense of it.

[Sze]

defer allocator.free(std.mem.span(str));

free needs a slice, also take a look at:

Convert []const u8 to [*:0]const u8

Hello @jjuel, welcome to the forum. Types: [*:0]const u8 is a sentinel terminated pointer, a pointer to 0 terminated string of u8. []const u8 is a slice, a pointer and a length. [:0]const u8 is a 0 terminated sentinel slice, a pointer to 0 terminated string and a length. Convertions: To convert from a zero terminated pointer to a slice use: std.mem.span . To convert from a 0 terminated sentinel slice to a zero terminated pointer call .ptr // "Hello" is a zero terminated array of u8 const …

[gaba-gh0ul]

This was the trick, thank you so much. I will read the linked post later.