Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!bnrgate!brtph3!brchh104!brchs1!bnr.ca!rice!sun-spots-request
From: neal@druhi.att.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Tasking and stack space usage by printf on Sun 3
Keywords: SunOS
Message-ID: <282@brchh104.bnr.ca>
Date: 16 Nov 90 12:05:00 GMT
Sender: news@brchh104.bnr.ca
Organization: Sun-Spots
Lines: 14
Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
X-Original-Date: 25 Oct 90 22:03:40 GMT
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 367, message 2
X-Note: Submissions: sun-spots@rice.edu, Admin: sun-spots-request@rice.edu

Warning - the Sun 3 implementation of printf (and fprintf, sprintf) uses a
large amount of stack space - over 2000 bytes in normal usage.  When you
use the %f format for floating point, the usage goes up to over 20000
bytes!

This may not matter a lot in most situations, but when you are managing
multiple tasks, e.g. using the C++ task library, you need to allocate lots
of space for the stack frames.  (The default is 3000 bytes.)

This is true for at least the 4.0 release of SunOS on a Sun 3.  Does
anyone know if this is true in 4.1, or on the SPARC implementation?  Does
anyone have an alternative implementation of fconvert(), etc?

-Neal McBurnett // AT&T Bell Labs, Denver // neal@druhi.ATT.COM, att!druhi!neal