🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <43nlc8$sll@orion.cybercom.net>, jerry@cybercom.net (Jerry Shekhel) writes:

  Jerry> UNIX systems ignore the problem and let the applications
  Jerry> worry about their own heap management.  The OS itself
  Jerry> provides only rudimentary facilities for expanding the heap.
  Jerry> On the other hand, UNIX provides very robust virtual memory
  Jerry> capabilities, so most programs can get by using only the
  Jerry> unsophisticated heap management of malloc() and related
  Jerry> functions.

I am not sure how fair this statement is to modern versions of UNIX.
It is true that the OS itself provides rudimentary facilities for
expanding the heap - just sbrk() to extend heap memory.  However, the
standard C library's heap allocation routines (malloc() and friends)
do try to do a reasonable job in terms or reusing freed blocks,
compacting contiguous free blocks when convenient.  I will grant you
it is possible to construct an application whose dynamic memory
behavior will defeat the strategies in the standard C library, but I
am not sure that this is commonly a problem...

Moises
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