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From: goykhman_a@apollo.HP.COM (Alex Goykhman)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: Shared Lib Question (ISC)
Message-ID: <519a55d6.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
Date: 16 May 91 20:34 GMT
Sender: root@apollo.HP.COM
Reply-To: goykhman_a@apollo.HP.COM (Alex Goykhman)
Lines: 23

In article <1991May10.192648.3147@Think.COM> barmar@think.com writes:
>In article <19255@rpp386.cactus.org> jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F Haugh II) writes:
>>  Name a single library function
>>which cannot be implemented well without global variables.
>
>Malloc() needs a global variable that points to the arena..........................
>
>Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.
>
>barmar@think.com
>{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar

Malloc() allocates memory from a process' data region.  Its internal data structures 
are only global to a process, but not the kernel and shared libraries.

Malloc() is always called in a particular context, and always has to deal with a single
set of memory structures.  It should not matter whether malloc() is linked to to a 
particular process statically, or dynamically.


Alex Goykhman                    speaking for myself  
Chelmsford System Software Lab   mit-eddie!apollo!goykhman_a
Hewlett-Packard, Company         goykhman_a@apollo.hp.com