Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!imagen!atari!apratt
From: apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Looking for an Evangelist
Message-ID: <1271@atari.UUCP>
Date: 27 Dec 88 19:33:32 GMT
References: <681@stag.UUCP>
Reply-To: apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt)
Organization: Atari (US) Corporation, Sunnyvale, California
Lines: 23

In article <681@stag.UUCP> to_stdnet@stag.UUCP writes:
> [peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes...]
> 
> > [TOS's] memory management has a fatal
> > bug that forces everyone to roll their own. but I'll wager that if you free
> > something twice in a complex 'C' program and let it run long enough it'll
> > crash.

I do not consider this a bug.  Who does? The fact that you attempted to
free a block twice is a bug.  It is *nice* when an OS guards against
programmer errors like this, and even nicer when the OS is completely
bulletproof, but it's not a bug when it's not. 

Secondly, the Malloc system call is not intended for general memory
management: the overhead in memory and time for using it are
prohibitive.  Also, of course, it has limits.  The fact that there are
limits *is* a bug, but it's a design flaw and it's too late to fix it
because people (A) break the rules of memory ownership and (B) rely on
undocumented side effects.  (There were net.wars about this earlier.)

============================================
Opinions expressed above do not necessarily	-- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp.
reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else.	  ...ames!atari!apratt