BSON_MEMORY(3)

💾 BSON Memory Abstraction 💾

okay so bestie, welcome to the BSON_MEMORY(3) page from libbson — the manual for libbson’s lightweight memory abstraction 💖. It exists to make portability to new platforms easier, and it also helps integrate with interesting higher-level languages. Iconic behavior, honestly.

But there is one caveat, and it’s a big one 😭: Libbson is not designed to deal with Out of Memory (OOM) situations. Doing OOM handling correctly requires extreme diligence throughout the application stack, and that has rarely been implemented correctly. This may change in the future, but as it stands now, Libbson will abort() under OOM situations. So yeah — dramatic but true, no cap 💀.

To aid in language binding integration, Libbson allows for setting a custom memory allocator via bson_mem_set_vtable(). That allocation may be reversed via bson_mem_restore_vtable() 🫶.

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

Libbson contains a lightweight memory abstraction to make portability to new platforms easier. Additionally, it helps us integrate with interesting higher-level languages. One caveat, however, is that Libbson is not designed to deal with Out of Memory (OOM) situations. Doing so requires extreme diligence throughout the application stack that has rarely been implemented correctly. This may change in the future. As it stands now, Libbson will abort() under OOM situations 😭.

To aid in language binding integration, Libbson allows for setting a custom memory allocator via bson_mem_set_vtable(). This allocation may be reversed via bson_mem_restore_vtable() 💅.

👑 AUTHOR 👑

MongoDB, Inc

🎀 COPYRIGHT 🎀

2009-present, MongoDB, Inc.

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💜 cute sign-off: this page is from libbson version 2.5.6, dated Oct 09, 2026 — periodt, bestie 🫶✨.