Shared Lib Question (ISC)

[Alex Goykhman]

In article <1991May10.192648.3147 at Think.COM> barmar at think.com writes:
>In article <19255 at rpp386.cactus.org> jfh at rpp386.cactus.org (John F Haugh II) writes:
>>  Name a single library function
>>which cannot be implemented well without global variables.
>
>Malloc() needs a global variable that points to the arena..........................
>
>Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.
>
>barmar at think.com
>{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar

Malloc() allocates memory from a process' data region.  Its internal data structures 
are only global to a process, but not the kernel and shared libraries.

Malloc() is always called in a particular context, and always has to deal with a single
set of memory structures.  It should not matter whether malloc() is linked to to a 
particular process statically, or dynamically.


Alex Goykhman                    speaking for myself  
Chelmsford System Software Lab   mit-eddie!apollo!goykhman_a
Hewlett-Packard, Company         goykhman_a at apollo.hp.com