Memory Compaction....

[rohitkondekar]

hey,

I am basically writing a simple program which asks like 100KB from the system and then, we have to do the memory management of this 100KB. like writing a allocate function, a deallocate function using best-fit, worst-fit etc.

But about the compaction part, i am not exactly getting it. (in compaction i have to remove the fragmented parts, i.e move all allocated blocks to one end) how to preserve the pointers...... anyway? i read about handlers and smart pointers.. but didn't get anything.

So please if possible guide me, like in what ways i could overcome this compaction part. any links to some information would be in great use.

thx

[xabnu]

A highly useful book in general would be The C Programming Language by K and R. They've included many useful explanations from a one-line string copier to this exact problem.

Apparently the idiom is that contiguous unused portions would be made into 'blocks' with headers holding data on their own size, and a pointer to the next one, the last pointing to the first. You may as well read their explanation as it's apparently of how things are actually done in Unix.