Re: memory fragmentation

[erik@... (Erik Hougaard)]

Adam Wozniak wrote:
> 
> I just spent several hours reviewing the list archive, and I
> know this has been asked here in various forms, but I couldn't
> find a direct answer, so here goes...
> 
> I'm evaluating LUA for use as a script language in an embedded processor
> environment.  The unit most remain in operation for very long periods of
> time.  We have only 64K of RAM to work with.
> 
> We are very concerned about memory fragmentation.
> 
> The "standard" way of dealing with this is to use a double pointer or
> "handle" method where the underlying operating environment can reshuffle
> objects in memory pretty much at will.  An example frequently cited in
> the list archive was PalmOS.
> 
> What sorts of mechanisms does Lua have to support this?
> 
> --Adam

We are working on the same, these are my observations:

1. Lua works of the ANSI malloc ralloc functions - the quality of these
functions are a good indicator of the lua speed/quality.

2. Lua uses some standard IO for error (That has been changed in 3.2) -
you must change this to your way of handling errors..

3. Lua uses ZIO (a file IO library) - all these functions must be
rewritten to support flash/eprom etc...

But it can be done :-)

Erik