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From: amead@s.psych.uiuc.edu (alan mead)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Variable sized arrays?
Message-ID: <1991Apr23.022206.29766@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 Apr 91 02:22:06 GMT
References: <1991Apr21.083641.18707@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> <1991Apr21.211234.17738@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <1991Apr22.000227.26061@bnlux1.bnl.gov>
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kushmer@bnlux1.bnl.gov (christopher kushmerick) writes:

>In article <1991Apr21.211234.17738@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> amead@s.psych.uiuc.edu (alan mead) writes:
>>*contiguous* chunks (I think--I'm not sure if it's always an error to
>How is one supposed to allocate contiguous blocks?

The manual states (the 5.5 manual under GetMem) that when the heap is
not fragmented, GetMem returns contiguous data (why shouldn't it?).

As to a general solution, yes--I'm not sure it exists.

>Plus I doubt that this would work anyway, because the limitation is the
>size of a segment, minus a few bytes used by the heap manager. Thus
>you could not allocate contiguous blocks, because the blocks would be 
>separated by these housekeeping bytes.

An excellant point, but then why would the manual bother describing the
returned memory as contiguous?  (I mean it *specifically* says something
like "if you want more than 64K...").

Just wondering.

-alan