Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bionet!apple!oliveb!amiga!cbmvax!grr From: grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Minix, Unix on the Amiga, and flames on AmigaDOS braindamage... Message-ID: <7635@cbmvax.UUCP> Date: 11 Aug 89 22:39:48 GMT References:<1410023@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM> Reply-To: grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 27 In article <1410023@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM> charles@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM (Charles Brown) writes: > >> Rubbish. Every AmigaOS program has to have a substantial amount of code > >> devoted to resource tracking... a job better assigned to the O/S. If you > >> don't want to call that "coding around" the problems, then you're > >> just playing games with words. > > I try to write my programs in standard C so that they are portable > between Unix and Amiga. I told a friend of mine (who doesn't own an > Amiga but who knows a great deal about Unix) that I planned to change > my programming style to explicitely free all memory that I had > malloced. He said that under Unix that was a bad idea because the OS > can free the memory much faster than my explicit calls. To some extent this may be true, especially if it's a simple case of malloc whatever you use once and then run with it. If you malloc stuff on an ongoing basis or have a program that runs for an arbitrary length of time, then even in a "free on termination" environment, you should be tracking and freeing memory. The alternative is known as "memory leaks". In most cases, the amount of code/time to free allocated memory should be quite trivial. If it bothers your efficiency experts, then #ifdef the code... -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: cbmvax!grr@uunet.uu.net Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)