buffer: expose class methods alloc and dispose

Expose the ability for users to allocate and manually dispose data on
any object. These are user-safe versions of internal smalloc functions.

1 files changed, 20 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/lib/buffer.js b/lib/buffer.js
index e0ce4c545..a21fb79f2 100644
--- a/lib/buffer.js
+++ b/lib/buffer.js
@@ -176,6 +176,26 @@ Buffer.concat = function(list, length) {
 };
 
 
+Buffer.alloc = function(n, obj) {
+  n = ~~n;
+  if (n < 0) n = 0;
+
+  if (n > kMaxLength)
+    throw new RangeError('n > kMaxLength');
+  if (Array.isArray(obj))
+    throw new TypeError('Arrays are not supported');
+
+  return alloc(obj != null ? obj : {}, n);
+};
+
+
+Buffer.dispose = function(obj) {
+  if (obj instanceof Buffer)
+    throw new TypeError('obj cannot be a Buffer');
+  smalloc.dispose(obj);
+};
+
+
 // toString(encoding, start=0, end=buffer.length)
 Buffer.prototype.toString = function(encoding, start, end) {
   encoding = !!encoding ? (encoding + '').toLowerCase() : 'utf8';