Re: Memory Management Question

If you want to use malloc/free, you probably can.  Just make sure you
don't mix it with ROM's alloc_mem/free_mem.

I've heard that the idea of ROM's memory pooling is to avoid memory
fragmentation, and it's also probably faster than the system's
malloc/free.  Some newer OS's are implementing better memory pooling
with malloc, but I haven't really looked at them.

The cheap and easy way to use ROM's pooling is to use alloc_mem and
free_mem as you would normally use malloc and free.  This is
inefficient for permanently-allocated items, since the size of the
memory block actually allocated is rounded up to the nearest power of
2.

The other way is to set up a new free_list.  Basically instead of
freeing the memory, it keeps a linked list of the "freed" items, and
when you go to allocate a new one it just pulls one off that list. 
This is more memory efficient than the previous method, since
alloc_mem allocates memory in generic sized blocks usually bigger than
you need.  It also gives you a good place to handle the freeing of
individual items in structs.

--Palrich.

On 9/20/05, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hello!
> 
> I want to add some linked lists to my characters for Role Play notes.
> 
> I have a question about this:
> 
> When I make my nodes that will be put on the characters, I have to use malloc,
> calloc, etc, to allocate my own memory. Then I have to do all of the freeing
> myself since I am not using a "free_list" (Such as the room_index_free list for
> room indicies)?
> 
> I think I am right because I was reading memory.txt in fastrom and it said that
> instead of using free, it keeps track of a list of old zeroed out instances of
> whatever is on the list (ie: areas, rooms, mobs, etc).
> 
> My final question is: for anything that does not use the "free_list" I have to
> do it the way I described above (assuming if I am right!)
> 
> THANKS!
> 
> 
> 
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