Kernel zeroes memory?

Question

I am using Debian squeeze and have noticed that memory is always zeroed. Is this new in linux distributions ? Some time ago, I believe I could use puts() and garbage would b

Answer 1

The first time you malloc a chunk memory there's a fair chance it will be zero because memory allocated by a system call (sbrk, mmap) is zeroed by the kernel. But if you free and malloc again the memory is recycled and may not contain zero.