What is the official position with respect to laundry services in the Parrot memory allocation code?
Some code assumes that the memory returned by Parrot_allocate and its cousins will be pre-washed, while other code does its own laundry. The same applies to 'bufferlike' headers - the buffer fields will always be initialised, but the remainder of the allocated header is sometimes assumed dirty, and sometimes assumed clean. (The latter currently breaks recycling of bufferlike headers) Making the allocation routines responsible for providing clean memory simplifies things for everybody else, but with a potential performance cost. -- Peter Gibbs EmKel Systems
