> >> Executables, being read-only, are mapped directly from disk and never
> >> use any swap at all. Only data gets mapped to swap.
> I am a little puzzled by the comment "executables do not use swap" and I
> have to admit computer design is not my forte.
You need swap for data because the computer has run out of RAM and needs
some place to store the data, hence disk space, a.k.a. "swap". Once RAM
becomes available the data is read back in from swap ("paged").
You do NOT need swap space for executables because they can be read back in
from the original executable file. Executables do not change in memory and
therefore are identical to the original file. If you wrote them to swap you
would be wasting disk space and duplicating the executable no disk. So the
computer *does* "page" the RAM, but it does not use swap space. This is an
optimization, nothing more.
~mark
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