# The OLE Memory Allocator

The COM Library provides an implementation of a memory allocator that is thread-safe (cannot cause problems in multi-threaded situations). Whenever ownership of an allocated chunk of memory is passed through a COM interface or between a client and the COM library, you must use this allocator to allocate the memory. Allocation internal to an object can use any allocation scheme desired, but the COM memory allocator is a handy, efficient, and thread-safe allocator.

A call to the API function CoGetMalloc provides a pointer to the OLE allocator, which is an implementation of the IMalloc interface. Rather than doing this, it is usually more efficient to call the helper functions CoTaskMemAlloc, CoTaskMemRealloc, and CoTaskMemFree, which wrap getting a pointer to the task memory allocator, calling the corresponding IMalloc method, and then releasing the pointer to the allocator.