[help-3dldf] Re: variables in yyparse

[Laurence Finston]

From: Paul Hilfinger <address@hidden> 

> The heap is of "fixed size", but on many systems, this fixed size can
> be the size of virtual memory.  

Does this mean that what I've read about the memory layout of executable files
is out of date?  

The GNU Coding Standards state that the maintainer of a GNU package is only
responsible for making sure it runs on GNU systems, i.e., GNU Linux and the
Hurd, so I'm only really concerned about these systems (which is nice for me).
 Do you (or anybody else who's listening) know if this applies to these
systems?  And does it depend on the system only or on the type of object files
created by the compiler and linker, too?

> Not quite. The memory allocator typically keeps administrative
> information next to the allocated storage, requiring it to "dirty" the
> VM pages allocated to it, so this loop WILL generally write pages to disk.

Thanks for the information.
Is the upshot that `bad_alloc' will never be thrown?
If this is the case, then I won't bother catching it.  On the other hand, if
it is not the case on machines that GNU systems might conceivably run on, then
I will have to catch it.

Thank you both very much for taking the trouble to write about this.

Laurence