🚀 go-pugleaf

On 20 Sep 95 01:12:39, Moises Lejter (mlm@cs.brown.edu) wrote:
: 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.
: 
: 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...

     A lot of it depends upon how well the heap management functions are
written, which is up to the compiler vendor.  Many compiler vendors have
barely adequate heap managers.  A few have reasonable ones.  In any case,
there are third-party heap managers available, if the one you've got doesn't
cut it.

-- 
the Windows API has done more to retard skill development
than anything since COBOL maintenance.
                           --Larry O'Brien