Re: Studying defobj and Zones and thinking about memory leaks

[Marcus G. Daniels]

>>>>> "PJ" == Paul Johnson <address@hidden> writes:

PJ> Where do I find the section "predefined zones"?

Beats me.  But here's where they are listed:

http://www.santafe.edu/projects/swarm/swarmdocs/refbook/swarm.defobj.generic.module.html

PJ> That section also says that the getZone method is in the drop
PJ> protocol documentation, I think that is not correct?

Thanks, fixed.

PJ> Partly I'm asking because I'm curious about a comment in the docs
PJ> that says it may be faster to just drop a whole Zone than to
PJ> individually drop the objects inside it.  I started to wonder "how
PJ> much faster" but then I started to think it was also much safer.

I doubt there is much of a speed difference.  But it is simpler, and thus
in some sense safer.

PJ> So I wondered, why not just create each agent in its own Zone

That makes sense, provided there are other objects that are components
to in agent.

PJ> Perhaps I need a lesson in "how much memory is used by each kind of
PJ> object" 

Try "xprint (aZone)".

PJ> because Zones are allocated
PJ> in page sized chunks and there might be a waste of memory within each
PJ> one.  Not that I really understand what a page is, I admit...

The talk about pages and page sizes are related to the idea that Zones
would be layered directly on the virtual memory memory system
(e.g. mmap), or even integrated with the OS.  That's not implemented.

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