Pete Chown <1@234.cx> writes:
of course, [mmap] can only be done on a limited type of file on some architectures, so it should be an optimization under the hood rather than an exposed interface.
In particular, you have to be careful not to run out of address space on 32-bit architectures. If you try to do file access by mapping the whole file into virtual memory, you won't be able to handle files larger than 2G or so. You also have to be careful not to map a number of file chunks, which in total exceed the address space available.
Which means that it *should* be explicit, rather than done under the hood. It's a tradeoff, the programmer should be aware when to apply it, the runtime should not impose a policy which would be hard to reverse. -- __("< Marcin Kowalczyk \__/ qrczak@knm.org.pl ^^ http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/