CompuServe Messages

Extra work? I *like* the extra safety that better memory management gives. 'malloc' and 'free' are *NOT* serious memory management for microcomputers, until Unix-like virtual memory is the norm. Good micro programs need to clean up after themselves and manage memory to a greater degree than 'malloc' already. For serious applications, handle-based memory is a blessing, not a hassle. Didn't understand your Windows quote, but Windows does have code swapping, too, and it's rather transparent. In essence, it does have "function handles", in that any function pointer is actually a pointer to a code stub that checks if the code is swapped in or out, and if it's out, it gets swapped back in before you jump to it. The table of stubs is always in memory, but it's probably small, if you're correctly labelling things as 'static' functions, or not. Swapping is done on a module-by-module basis. This scheme also allows code to be shared. It's not different than swapping schemes implemented by overlays in conventional Amiga compilers, except it's done naturally at an OS level. There's lots of things to learn from other operating systems!