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From: Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@g{oogle}mail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,sci.stat.math
Subject: Re: realloc() - frequency, conditions, or experiences about
 relocation?
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2024 15:20:00 +0300
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Malcolm McLean writes that, given the log-normal distribution
of file sizes with known parameters,

> we can work out, given that a file is at least N
> characters, what is the prbablity that an allocation of
> any size will contain the whole file, and how many bytes,
> on average will be wasted.

This is why I thought statisticians might help him: Malcolm
wants to find the aposteriori distribution of the size of a
file, after it has been found to exceed N bytes.  Am I right
that if we take the remaining (N>20) part of the density
function and re-normalise it, we shall obtain the desired
distribution?

My proposition was as follows:

  1.  Find quantile q0 corresponding to the buffer size
      currently requested.

  2.  Calculate new quantile q1 = 1-(1-q0)/k, where k>1 is
      an adjustable parameter, and use its corresponding
      value as the new allocation size.

For example, assuming for simplicity a uniform [0,20]
distribution of file sizez and k=2, a sequence of allocation
may look like this:

                requested allocated
                 2        20-(20- 2)/2 = 11
                12        20-(20-12)/2 = 16
                18        20-(20-18)/2 = 19
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