🚀 go-pugleaf

RetroBBS NetNews Server

Inspired by RockSolid Light RIP Retro Guy

Article View: comp.editors
Article #3668

Re: GNU Emacs, memory usage, releasing

#3668
From: Peter da Silva
Date: Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:01
23 lines
1729 bytes
In article <32534@news.Think.COM> rlk@think.com (Robert Krawitz) writes:
> 2)  Emacs dies very quickly after its virtual size exceeds 16 Mbytes,

This is a scary thought all by itself, but...

> due to the 24 bit pointers used (the top 8 bits are used as tag bits for
> the Lisp interpreter).

Come *ON*, why is this accepted? I remember not so very long ago people were
flaming Microsoft for doing this on the Macintosh, which led to Microsoft
applications not working on >1MB machines after the extra bits started getting
decoded...

Not to mention that making assumptions about pointer formats is dangerous in
and of itself. Certainly you can't *use* such pointers without stripping them,
which adds overhead to every memory reference. And (per recent discussions
in comp.std.c) there are architectures out there that won't even let you load
them into an address register.
-- 
`-_-' Peter da Silva. +1 713 274 5180. <peter@ficc.uu.net>.
 'U`  Also <peter@ficc.lonestar.org> or <peter@sugar.lonestar.org>.
"It was just dumb luck that Unix managed to break through the Stupidity Barrier
and become popular in spite of its inherent elegance." -- gavin@krypton.sgi.com
Technical Details
Message-ID: <S_W2=5ggpc2@ficc.uu.net>
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!texbell!sugar!ficc!peter
References: <1558@aber-cs.UUCP> <32534@news.Think.COM>

Show Full Headers
Complete Article Headers
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!texbell!sugar!ficc!peter
From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.editors,comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: GNU Emacs, memory usage, releasing
Keywords: GNU emacs malloc memory working set gap editor
Message-ID: <S_W2=5ggpc2@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 1 Jan 90 00:01:43 GMT
References: <1558@aber-cs.UUCP> <32534@news.Think.COM>
Reply-To: peter@sugar.lonestar.org (Peter da Silva)
Followup-To: comp.lang.c
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Lines: 18