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From: Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: realloc() - frequency, conditions, or experiences about
 relocation?
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2024 11:22:31 +0200
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Am 17.06.2024 um 08:08 schrieb Janis Papanagnou:
> In a recent thread realloc() was a substantial part of the discussion.
> "Occasionally" the increased data storage will be relocated along
> with the previously stored data. On huge data sets that might be a
> performance factor. Is there any experience or are there any concrete
> factors about the conditions when this relocation happens? - I could
> imagine that it's no issue as long as you're in some kB buffer range,
> but if, say, we're using realloc() to substantially increase buffers
> often it might be an issue to consider. It would be good to get some
> feeling about that internal.
> 
> Janis

realloc() is just a convenience funciton. Usually the reallocation
can't happen in-place and a second malloc() followed by a copy and
a free() does the same.
For large data it would be nice if the pages being deallocated later
would be incrementally marked as discardable after copying a portion.
This would result in only a small portion of additional physical
memory being allocated since the newly allocated pages become asso-
ciated with phyiscal pages when they're touched first. Windows has
VirtualAlloc() with MEM_RESET for that, Linux has madvise() with
MADV_DONTNEED.