Re: [gdome] Gdome providing free()

[Luca Padovani <lpadovan cs unibo it>]

Hi Blair,

On Mon, 2003-03-17 at 21:39, Blair Zajac wrote:
> I haven't looked at the GdomeDOMString code yet, so does this require a string
> copy?  I'd like to minimize these.

GdomeDOMString does NOT copy the string returned by libxml2, it only
wraps the pointer returned by libxml2 within another little structure,
but I understood your main concern (as by email subject) was the fact
that one has to use the right deallocator when freeing memory allocated
by libxml2. So what I'm saying is that GdomeDOMString will use the right
deallocator, hence it will fix the problem reported for this particular
email thread, however...

> The idea sounds good, assuming we can minimize making copies.

[slightly off-topic]
...you still need to use copy_string in the Ocaml binding. This is usually not
a major concern, unless the string you're duplicating is really large (which
might well be given that it is an entire serialized XML document). In that
case, my objection is that the principle of serializing the document (to a
string) is the real problem, and that you should seek for a smarter solution
that passes the document to the receiving application without serializing.
BTW, I think that the time for serialization itself overwhelms the time for
scanning to the end of the string, or for duplicating it any way, so probably
trying to minimize string duplication is only going to affect an irrelevant
slot of time for the whole operation, and will give us headache...

Cheers,
-- luca

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"Early optimization is the root of all evil", D.E.Knuth