what is __imp__malloc in a mingw-32 linked program?

Question

In am attempt to figure out if malloc() in my cross-compiled mingw32 program is threadsafe or not, I ran nm on the binary. The results:

$ i386-mingw32-nm myfile.exe  | grep malloc
00ab04fc I __imp__malloc
005b8e70 T _malloc
$

For comparison, here is a search for GetLastError, which is used but not defined in my program:

$ i386-mingw32-nm myfile.exe  | grep GetLastError
005b9034 T _GetLastError@0
00ab0370 I __imp__GetLastError@0
$

And here is a search for something I know is in my program:

$ i386-mingw32-nm myfile.exe  | grep ends_with
0040a98d T _ends_with
$ 

I think that this means that malloc() in my C library is provided as a cover to a system malloc(), as is GetLastError(), but that ends_with() doesn't appear in the system. But I'd like a second opinion.

Thanks!

Answer 1

mingw does not use its own malloc, it links the Windows malloc. So yes, it is threadsafe, because Windows is.