DiscardVirtualMemory function (memoryapi.h)

Discards the memory contents of a range of memory pages, without decommitting the memory. The contents of discarded memory is undefined and must be rewritten by the application.

Syntax

DWORD DiscardVirtualMemory(
  [in] PVOID  VirtualAddress,
  [in] SIZE_T Size
);

Parameters

[in] VirtualAddress

Page-aligned starting address of the memory to discard.

[in] Size

Size, in bytes, of the memory region to discard. Size must be an integer multiple of the system page size.

Return value

ERROR_SUCCESS if successful; a System Error Code otherwise.

Remarks

If DiscardVirtualMemory fails, the contents of the region is not altered.

Use this function to discard memory contents that are no longer needed, while keeping the memory region itself committed. Discarding memory may give physical RAM back to the system. When the region of memory is again accessed by the application, the backing RAM is restored, and the contents of the memory is undefined.

Requirements

See also

Memory Management Functions

OfferVirtualMemory

ReclaimVirtualMemory

Virtual Memory Functions

VirtualAlloc

VirtualFree

VirtualLock

VirtualQuery