[TCLCORE] Re: Hintermayer's string allocation patch

[George H. <ga...@si...>]

In message <200...@po...>, Dan Kuchler writes:
 : > But if one still wants to handle this within Tcl, I have a slightly
 : > different tact.  When realloc fails, pull back the size.  It can fail
 : > when you can't allocate even the extra space needed.
 : 
 : Right.  If you look at Jeff's posts from yesterday
 : he mentions this option.  I initially proposed this
 : several weeks ago.  The current tcl C memory allocation
 : APIs will panic when the allocation fails.  I proposed
 : that a new API be added for growth algorithms where
 : you could specify two quantities.  One would be the
 : bare minimum amount of space needed to continue (the
 : size of the initial string + the size of the appended
 : string).  The second size would be the desired amount
 : of space to allocate (this would use a growth algorithm
 : similar to the one in the core today).  Then the
 : allocation function would (if the allocation failed)
 : gradually reduce the quantity of space asked for by
 : some algorithm/factor until it was at the minimum.
 : When the minimum was reached, if the allocation failed
 : it would panic.
 : 
 : The only issue with this was that it was probably a
 : little more work to implement.  I think that there
 : is room for both solutions.  One makes the core a
 : little more memory efficient and the other makes
 : the core a little more flexible in its memory
 : allocation.
 : 
 : Alternatively, if the TCT really thinks this is
 : too specialized the 'large string' size could
 : be included at a *really* high setting, and
 : only those who need it could tune the core
 : to use it.

This is a solution in need of a problem. 

While I think Gerhard's realloc mods sound very good, I reiterate my
question.  Where do you need a a 1 Gigabyte string?  (BTW, that's 1/2
of a 32-bit address space).

Please don't fix Tcl's growth scheme until it's broken.  First, make
the case for all the applications that this change fixes.  Otherwise
this is another Tcl pseudo-improvement.

--gah



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