Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!haven!ncifcrf!nlm-mcs!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Memory allocation techniques
Message-ID: <8510@smoke.ARPA>
Date: 16 Sep 88 15:13:43 GMT
References: <415@marob.MASA.COM>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 11

In article <415@marob.MASA.COM> daveh@marob.masa.com (Dave Hammond) writes:
>(1) Why the switch from sbrk() to malloc()?

The most likely reason is that C library routines (and others) may very
well call malloc(), which moves the program break, and the application's
attempt to totally control everything in the heap runs amok at that
point.

>(2) Why `waste' smaller chunks?

Probably it was an attempt to reduce fragmentation problems.