Re: [MiNT] Mintlib / posix regex / alloca and malloc

[Alan Hourihane <alanh@fairlite.co.uk>]

On 06/03/11 21:44, m0n0 wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> what reasons are there why the mintlib is compiled without support for
> malloc? Currently it uses alloca.
> Netsurf crashes with some pages when used with mintlib regex + alloca
> (the crashes can be avoided (sometimes) by setting the stack really
> big (3MB and more...), but it's not a real solution...). When mintlib
> get's compiled with -DREGEX_MALLOC all the pages known to trigger the
> error are working fine.
>
> The only thing which I can think of is speed & memory fragmentation.
> But on the other hand, I don't believe that someone uses his/her
> atari  24h a day / 360 days a year... so memory fragmentation maybe
> isn't that important.
>
> the other thing is speed, but I would prefer a stable regex
> implementation over one that has bugs.
>
> What do people think, would it be good to make REGEX_MALLOC the default?

In our situation, I think it probably makes sense to compile regex with
REGEX_MALLOC, and then we don't need to bump the stack for these
applications. It's painful enough with the stack troubles, that I'm
inclined to enable this.

Anyone have any conflicts with the change ?

Alan.