Re: Finding out minimal allocation unit

[Stefan Bellon <sbellon@sbellon.de>]

Randy Brukardt wrote:

> But that isn't really a meaningful question. It clearly depends on
> the storage pool, and if the storage pool comes from somewhere else,
> it may even depend on the OS version you are running. For instance,
> the standard storage pool in Janus/Ada uses a standard Windows heap.
> Those exhibit vastly different behavior on Windows 95 than Windows
> 2000, and somewhat different on almost every version of Windows.

I don't agree that it isn't a meaningful question because of that.
Quite the contrary. _Because_ we realize that there are differences,
we'd like to find out the allocation strategy in order to optimize for
that.

> Rule of thumb: if the behavior of the standard storage pool actually
> makes a difference in your application, then don't use it!

Ok, this is an alternative to think about.

> Write your own storage pool that has the behavior you need. It's
> relatively easy to do, especially if you have fixed size elements.
> And then you can effectively use an array to allocate elements and
> still have cheap insertion and deletion and reordering.

I'm a bit unclear about how to do it. Do I implement the Allocate using
the standard storage pool (i.e. using 'new') or do I interface it
directly to the underlying C library (i.e. using 'malloc')? In both
cases I still have the same problem as above.

Are there examples of such a storage pool implementation around?

-- 
Stefan Bellon