Re: [Exim] Another small patch, please comment

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Autor: Philip Hazel
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A: Kevin P. Fleming
CC: exim-users
Assumpte: Re: [Exim] Another small patch, please comment
On Thu, 3 Apr 2003, Kevin P. Fleming wrote:

> It looks odd to me too! However, it makes perfect sense seeing that any single
> Exim process is never going to allocate enormous amounts of "store", and the
> processes are quite short-lived.


A. I try hard to call it "memory", but unfortunately I am sufficiently
old that

  (1) My instinct is to call it "store" because that's what it was
      always called in the UK 30-40 years ago. We had "core store" and
      "backing store" (discs and tapes).


  (2) My own memory (store?) fails to remember to call it "memory" from
      time to time.


B. I am lazy. Keeping track of dynamic memory usage in C is tricky, and
hard to get right. Since the actual amount used by any one Exim
process is not likely to be very large, and memory is dead cheap
these days (sheesh, I can remember when 32K - yes, I mean K not M -
was a lot!), it seemed to me that there was no point in trying to be
ultra clever. Exim just takes care not to be too profligate in some
of the cases where it is easy to re-use memory. And ending the
process is the ultimate garbage collector. :-)

--
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@???      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.