Re: Teraspace memory allocation

["Simon Coulter" <shc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Walden,

You wrote:
>The non-ILE programs wouldn't do anything with it but pass it back to an
>ILE program. I liked the 8-byte non-quad word aligned because it would
>enable me to not worry about alignment in OPM programs.

Then write the TS functions in C and pass back the 8-byte TS pointer.

>As for the flaw in design, I'm not sure I agree. As long as I tell the
>consumer of the API that "this is a handle, leave it alone!" I don't see
>why I need to stay away from passing the pointer. Smart handles are used
>all over the place, take a look at the socket-handle in TCP, it's the
>port number, but it doesn't need to be.

The consumer must leave the handle alone even if it is not 'smart' since
changing it will lead to undesirable results.  I don't consider exposing
the address as 'smart', and even though it is done all over the place that
is no reason to continue the practice.  (Still, I'm grateful that IBM use
so-called 'smart' handles in various places -- it allows me to
reverse-engineer them and use that information where a less 'smart' handle
would block me.)  Also, a TCP socket descriptor has no direct relationship
with the port number -- it is simply an ordinal number representing the
socket.  All the 'intelligence' is actually in the sockaddr structure.

>Because of the difficulties with Teraspace I may still end up with an
>integer "handle" into an array that contains the pointers, it just seems
>like extra work.

Encapsulation is always extra work but it generally leads to more robust
and flexible interfaces and you are usually grateful for the effort at
some unforseen future time for some unforseen future reason!

Regards,
Simon Coulter.

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