When is it time for a 1.0 feature freeze?

[Serg Kovrov]

Walter, thanks for your kind and comprehensive answer, but I still do 
not get this 'malloc/free do not return memory to OS' part.

I just tried simplest example with GCC(mingw): I allocated with 'new' 
1Mb string. Then in process explorer (or in FAR's Process list) I can 
see my process usage of 'Private bytes' increases equivalently. When 
free this string, with 'delete', i see that 'Private bytes' usage 
dropped to same level it was before. Isn't this mean that memory 
returned to OS?

And second example, I just tried open text files of different size with 
Catch22 Neatpad example (http://catch22.net/tuts/ - compiled with 
VC++2005), and see exactly same  behavior. Private bytes usage changes 
proportionally to opened file size. I've looked at source code an can 
see that for file buffer and support buffers allocation/deallocation 
used new/delete from standard library.

Could someone please, explain me where I do not understand Walter? Or 
maybe point to appropriate article/reference.

-- 
serg.