Documentation problem.
- Posted by LarryMiller Apr 07, 2009
- 955 views
The following section of the on-line documentation is hopelessly out of date:
QUOTE
1.5.7 Use of a Swap File
If you run a Euphoria program under Linux/FreeBSD or Windows (or in a DOS shell under Windows), and the program runs out of physical memory, it will start using "virtual memory". The operating system provides this virtual memory automatically by swapping out the least-recently-used code and data to a system swap file. To change the size of the Windows swap file, click on Control Panel / 386 Enhanced / "virtual memory...". Under OS/2 you can adjust the "DPMI_MEMORY_LIMIT" by clicking the Virtual DOS machine icon / "DOS Settings" to allocate more extended memory for your program.
Under pure DOS, outside of Windows, there is no system swap file so the DOS-extender built in to ex.exe (DOS32) will create one for possible use by your program. See swap file.
END QUOTE
This appears to have been written for Windows 3.1 and OS/2, systems that are no longer supported by Euphoria. I don't know how virtual memory worked on Win3.1 but the description is not correct for modern systems. Virtual memory is a system and is always in use, no matter how much RAM you might have. Virtual memory doesn't even require a pagefile (but it is strongly recommended).
This needs to be rewritten to accomodate the current reality.
I won't even pretend to understand how virtual memory works under a DOS extender.
