Archives of the Caml mailing list > Message from David Brown

Browse thread

[Caml-list] Does Caml have slow arithmetics ?

Diego Olivier Fernandez Pons
- Richard Jones
- Basile Starynkevitch [local]
  - Diego Olivier Fernandez Pons
    - Basile Starynkevitch [local]
      - Olivier_Pérès
        
        David Brown
        
        Olivier_Pérès
        
        David Brown
        
        Olivier_Pérès
    - Richard Jones
    - David Haguenauer
    - Brian Hurt
  - Evgeny Chukreev
    - Xavier Leroy

Date:	-- (:)
From:	David Brown <caml-list@d...>
Subject:	Re: [Caml-list] Does Caml have slow arithmetics ?

On Wed, Jul 07, 2004 at 07:43:13PM +0200, Olivier P?r?s wrote:
> David Brown wrote:
> >
> >The only pointers that ocaml "cares" about (in the sense of the GC or
> >polymorphic compare) are those that are allocated on the ocaml heap.
> 
>    Sure, but the reason given above to zero-tag integers was to have C 
> pointers "look" like integers to the GC. However, C pointers are not 
> necessarily aligned and thus may mislead the GC into trying to 
> garbage-collect them.

No.  Aligned C pointers look like pointers to the GC.  It uses a bitmap
to distinguish between C pointers and ocaml heap managed pointers.
Misaligned pointers are the ones that will look like integers to the GC.

Dave

-------------------
To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr
Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/
Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners