OpenEuphoria

Re: allocate() and free()

• Posted by Robert Craig <rds at RAPIDEUPHORIA.COM> Dec 02, 2000
• 516 views

Aku writes:
> If you don't trust me, you can try yourself.

Ok, I tried it. Thanks for the very clear demo programs.

It tells me I have 1953Mb of free "memory"
on my 64Mb RAM machine. After the VB program
allocates 10Mb it tells me I have 27Mb less "memory".
Then when the 10Mb is cleared, it tells me I now have
1966Mb, i.e. 13Mb more than I had at the
very beginning.

I don't know what the numbers mean.
I respectfully suggest that you don't know
what the numbers mean either.

It's true that the Euphoria program (as I would expect)
didn't bounce back to the original level of free "memory",
since it is keeping the memory for further use.

Maybe there's a special case where VB can return
the memory. If it's like other Microsoft Basic's I've studied
in the past, it has a separate contiguous area of
memory reserved for just strings, and it triggers an
expensive garbage collection whenever it happens to
run out of string memory. Perhaps it can return to the O/S,
or downsize, that particular block if it's at the end of the heap.

Anyway, this is just idle speculation.
I am content with Euphoria's current way of allocating
and deallocating storage, and I have no plans to change it.

Regards,
   Rob Craig
   Rapid Deployment Software
   http://www.RapidEuphoria.com