How to save RAM in D programs (on zero initialized buffers)

[Michel Fortin]

On 2012-02-07 20:24:40 +0000, "Marco Leise" <Marco.Leise at gmx.de> said:

> Am 07.02.2012, 21:11 Uhr, schrieb Nick Sabalausky <a at a.a>:
> 
>> Is void initialization not good enough?
>> 
>> IIRC it's something like:
>> 
>> ubyte[] buf = void;
> 
> That gives me a) no buffer, who's pointer is b) not initialized to null.
> I want instead a defined pointer, to a valid array, that is initialized 
> to  zero.
> 
> Anyway, I think the flaw in my proposal is the use of a GC. Since we 
> don't  get the memory directly from the operating system, but from a 
> memory pool  in the GC, it is generally 'recycled' and already used 
> memory. It has to  be zeroed out manually, unless there was a way to 
> tell the OS to rebind  some virtual memory addresses in our program to 
> this magic 'zero page'.

What would be nice is a GC that would just track system-allocated 
memory blocks. What would be really great is if you could allocate a 
block with malloc/calloc (or something else) and later pass ownership 
to the GC, so that the GC calls free (or something else) when all 
references disappear. But I'm not sure how you can do that efficiently.

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/