Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!ziebmef!mcp
From: mcp@ziebmef.uucp (Marc Plumb)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: How serious is memory fragmentation?
Message-ID: <1989May12.175043.24988@ziebmef.uucp>
Date: 12 May 89 21:50:42 GMT
References: <9504@watcgl.waterloo.edu>
Reply-To: mcp@ziebmef.UUCP (Marc Plumb)
Distribution: na
Organization: Ziebmef Public Access Unix, Toronto, Ontario
Lines: 10

The worst case for memory fragmentation is to make many allocations
and free every other one.  If you're allocating a lot of small elements
but freeing them all at about the same time, all is well.
If you allocate a bunch of permanent blocks, and then a lot of temporary
ones which get thrashed a lot, it's still not too bad.  It's when you
mix everything up (like in a Lisp run-time - you may not know at allocation
time even approximately how long the storage will be needed) that it gets
trashed.
-- 
	-Colin Plumb (mcp@ziebmef.uucp)