Re: Possible memory corruption problem

[Piet van Oostrum <piet@cs.uu.nl>]

>>>>> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> (EZ) wrote:

>>> From: "Richard M. Stallman" <rms@gnu.org>
>>> CC: piet@cs.uu.nl, emacs-devel@gnu.org
>>> Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 23:40:51 -0500
>>> 
>>> > I have tried to find the common circumstances when this happens and it
>>> > aeems to me that it happens when the machine is low on virtual memory
>>> > (including swap space).
>>> 
>>> Emacs should display a warning when the system is low on memory.  Does
>>> it?
>>> 
>>> Emacs tries to estimate how much memory is available, but that estimate
>>> may not really work.  For instance, it never works for me.
>>> The code to estimate available space worked in the 80s on Unix,
>>> but it may need adaptation to the systems of today.

>EZ> It's possible that the existing estimate doesn't work on systems that
>EZ> don't use sbrk.  I believe GNU/Linux is one of those systems.

It seems it is not used on Mac OS X either. The man page says:
     The brk and sbrk functions are historical curiosities left over from ear-
     lier days before the advent of virtual memory management.

And I run a test program with malloc calls, set a breakpoint at brk and
sbrk and it did not reach those.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet@cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP 8DAE142BE17999C4]
Private email: piet@vanoostrum.org