Re: Gnome memory requirements

["Freddie Unpenstein" <fredderic excite com>]

Just some musings...  I suspect this has been discussed before, though I couldn't find anything in a cursory 
glance through the search engine.  (But then I'm notoriously hopeless with search engines)


> > Next thing is, that GLib memory subsystem don't really free memory
> > on g_free(), but do this when program exits. Memory freed with
> > g_free() is still 'located' for program, which allocated it for
> > first time.
> Yes, that's true.  Its only true for any memory created by using
> g_slice. g_free is the same as a free. Memory is then returned back
> to the system.

One thing I have a question about, is the allocation of strings.

If I want to combine a gchar* username, and a gint number, to form a new gchar* identifier, and use that as 
the name of a widget...  It ends up going something like this:

gchar *uid = g_strdup_printf("%s-%i", username, number);
gtk_widget_set_name(GTK_WIDGET(widget), uid);
g_free(uid);

Here, we're allocating memory with g_malloc(), writing a value into it, then allocating more memory with 
g_malloc, into which that value is then copied.  Finally, I need to free the original memory.

And quite often, when fetching a value from glib/gtk, it'll g_strdup() (or similar) the value which it then 
returns, and which I have to g_free() when I'm finished with it.

Surely this must have an impact on memory and time usage.

In C++, we have the likes of the STL Strings, which perform reference counting, treating a string with more 
than one reference as immutable.  The presence of a length and allocated length probably makes them a little 
large, possible even larger than the strings they're holding.  But a simplified container which contains the 
string internally, with a leading reference count, I'd say would do wonders.


Fredderic

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