help with vadvise()

[Ed Anselmo]

A user recently asked me:

        I could use some help on a problem potentially very important to the
        Haskell project and T.  I really have very little experience with
        regard to Unix systems programming, but luckily this problem doesn't
        really require much depth of knowledge.  In conjunction with David
        Kranz, we have been trying what we thought should be a substantial
        improvement to the paging behavior of T during its garbage collection.
        This was based on what I read about the vadvise system call in its man
        page.  The change we made doesn't seem to be making much difference,
        and I am wondering what is really happening since the man page says
        that it should make a big difference to Lisp processes.  However, the
        man page also says, "Will go away soon, being replaced by a per-page
        vadvise facility."  The man page is dated March 22, 1989.  Looking at
        /usr/include/sys/vadvise.h also shows several possible options to call
        vadvise with, some of which are not documented on the man page.

        Can you point me to where to find out more about what vadvise can do
        and how to use it, or if it has been superseded?

T = Yale T (lisp dialect); Haskell = see comp.lang.functional

Words of wisdom, and code samples would be much appreciated.  Thanks.
-- 
Ed Anselmo   anselmo-ed at cs.yale.edu   {harvard,cmcl2}!yale!anselmo-ed