no-pointer areas

[Craig Black]

Overall a very, very good idea.
However, why does the bytes allocated per element have to be the 
qualification?
This seems a bit convoluted to me. Why not just add a parameter with a 
default value?

void *malloc(size_t size, int hasPtr = 1);

-Craig

"Thomas Kuehne" <thomas-dloop at kuehne.cn> wrote in message 
news:slrnejqe00.7a5.thomas-dloop at birke.kuehne.cn...
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> With all that Phobos talk going on ... here is a small task:
>
> Implement GC areas that are guaranteed to contain no pointers
> and are subsequently not searched for pointers during GC-collections.
>
> Basic Idea:
>
> void *malloc(size_t size);
> void *calloc(size_t nmemb, size_t size);
>
> If less than sizeof(size_t) bytes are allocated per element, the
> allocated memory is guaranteed to contain no pointers.
>
> There are three implementation levels:
>
> 1) Basic (dmd/src/phobos/internal/gc/gcx.d)
>
> Implement the basic idea(malloc, calloc, realloc, ...) and provide
> the functions malloc_no_ptr, calloc_no_ptr, realloc_no_ptr.
>
> 2) Complete (dmd/src/phobos/internal/gc/gc.d)
>
> Update the code to take advantage of gcx.d's *_no_ptr.
>
> 3) Extended (compiler and dmd/src/phobos/internal/gc/gc.d)
>
> By adding compiler support, elements with sizes larger than or
> equal to sizeof(size_t) that contain no pointers (e.g. the data
> portion of float arrays and some structs)can use the no-ptr pools.
>
> As a result, the GC for applications using lots of data arrays should
> be noticeably faster while other applications shouldn't experience any
> measurable speed decreases.
>
> Thomas
>
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