Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!lanl!jlg
From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Answers, Chapter 1: TeX (was C's sins... and others)
Message-ID: <5091@lanl.gov>
Date: 6 Nov 90 21:56:04 GMT
References: <7298:Nov620:50:5990@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Organization: Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos, N.M.
Lines: 14

From article <7298:Nov620:50:5990@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>, by brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein):
> [...]
> Huh? Pointers are used to track the segments. It's just that you never
> try to use one pointer across segments. This sort of bi-level allocation
> is actually rather easy. Pointers are perfectly adequate for writing the
> _whole_ memory manager.

Well, not on my PC at any rate.  Segments have a maximum size of
64K.  The memory is 640K.  Clearly, some arithmetic on numbers bigger
than 16-bits is required to keep track of free space.  C pointers
can't do that.  But, _something_ must be.  Must not be pointers though,
all them use 16-bit arithmetic.

J. Giles