Justin has left a new comment on your post "Memory Management in PIRC":
APR is the Apache Runtime library. It's centered around the idea that all allocations are done for some specific request/task and that most (or even all) of that memory will be needed for the duration of that request/task. In the other case I meant that the additional pointer for the singly linked list is part of the allocation itself (not of a meta data-structure). So if you need to allocate 12 bytes you would allocate 12 bytes + sizeof(pointer) and return the pointer of that allocation + sizeof(pointer) bytes so that the person who requested that memory does not see this overhead. Allocations using the APR trick work from allocation pools (each pool is allocated using malloc-like things but serves multiple memory allocation till it's full). The other trick uses a malloc-like thing per allocation but uses pointer tricks to hide it's own meta-data. I have no idea if this is allowed/acceptable in this context or that the allocations themselves must be pure malloc-like allocations. Posted by Justin to Parrot at November 30, 2008 11:06 AM
