Re: [MacPerl] efficiency & memory

[bart.mediamind@tornado.be (Bart Lateur)]

On Thu, 20 Aug 1998 14:18:56 -0700, Nathaniel Irons wrote:

>I would 
>appreciate any suggestions on how to bring the memory considerations
>under control (assuming memory is where the problem lies).

You can verify if memory is the problem by using either one of the
(free) memory inspection tools while MacPerl is chucking away, or even
the "about this Macintosch" in the Finder. Once MacPerl has souped up
it's allocated partition, a crash is imminent.

>On the mac I typically get dumped into the debugger when datafile sizes
>exceed about 500K, though I do see graceful out of memory errors in
>about 1 in 5 attempts.  Under Linux, the script completes calmly in a
>few seconds no matter how big the file is.

You're bumping your head on the Mac limitation, where all required
memory needs to be allocated to the program beforehand. If it's far too
much, tough luck for the other programs, but if it's too little, tough
luck on you!

Hmm... This makes one daydream. What if MacPerl could get more memory
from the system pool, if what was allocated to the program just isn't
enough. Just like the Finder does.

Or, what if a droplet could determine how much memory MacPerl should
request from the system, when it starts up. Typically, most scripts
needs a lot less memory than just a few exceptions, like this one.

	Bart.

***** Want to unsubscribe from this list?
***** Send mail with body "unsubscribe" to mac-perl-request@iis.ee.ethz.ch