> if that list is empty, it allocates a new block of memory for it... I > was always told that doing so was also faster than allocating a new > chunk of memory for the structure, and I'm not sure if that's true or
The idea is to limit fragmentation. Malloc and free never return memory to the operating system anyway, so keeping it allocated isn't really a waste or anything. But malloc is written to be fast and general-purpose. It isn't very well tuned for applications that run for long periods of time or allocate blocks of memory in a wide range of sizes. If you let malloc have its way, over time you would end up with small bits of allocated memory all over the place with no large, contiguous areas. Then when you needed a large chunk of memory, it'd have to go back to the operating system for more. So the point of memory pooling is to reserve large blocks of memory so malloc can't chop them up for other things, otherwise you could wind up using even more physical memory. -- ROM mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe here ->>> http://www.rom.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rom
