Re: [MacPerl] efficiency & memory

[John W Baxter <jwblist@olympus.net>]

At 1:00 -0500 8/21/98, Matthew Langford wrote:
>> 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.
>
>Yes, I have seen stack<->heap collisions in MacPerl, based on regular
>expressions I was running.  Out of curiosity, do you use a low-level
>debugger like MacsBug?  Does it report a bad heap?
>
>I found it easier to change the regular expression.  It would be nice if
>MacPerl gracely reported the problem rather than requiring a three-finger
>salute, but for now...

If the problem is excessive use of stack, then the potential solution lies
in the MacPerl application giving itself more stack if it sees that it has
enough allocated memory to do that.  Mac applications control the boundary
between stack and heap in their startup code.

It could be automatic to grab extra space for stack (it may already be in
the code, or it may not)...it could be something Matthias provides as an
option, particularly for cases where the stack needs are extreme.  Or, of
course, it might not happen.

   --John
--
John Baxter   jwblist@olympus.net      Port Ludlow, WA, USA
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.  Teach him to fish,
and you get rid of him for the weekend.

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