[TCLCORE] Re: Hintermayer's string allocation patch

[Jeffrey H. <jef...@aj...>]

> From: Mark Harrison [mailto:ma...@us...]
	...
> John Ousterhout <ou...@aj...> wrote:
> > So, if you run
> > out of memory, you can't necessarily even execute scripts to free
> > up memory.  Bottom line: better to panic cleanly with a nice simple
> > error message.
>
> At the VHLL conference, Steve Johnson mentioned that this behavior
> (dying on memory allocation failure) was a reason that he would never
> consider use Tcl in a mission-critical system.
>
> After his talk, we chatted a bit, and I explained that a memory
> error was just one of the failure modes we deal with when writing
> this kind of system.  The mechanisms that are routinely put into
> place for dealing with process death and node failure handle this
> situation.

At the same time it should also be said that people can override the
panic proc (with Tcl_SetPanicProc) and create a system that will
capture out-of-mem situations and allow some element of recovery.
I've outlined in detail how this can be done on the newsgroup, if
someone needs to pass it on.

Jeffrey Hobbs                     Tcl Ambassador
ho...@Aj...          Ajuba Solutions (née Scriptics)

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