ILT> Bob Rossi <bob@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> On Tue, Aug 30, 2005 at 10:54:02PM +0100, Lexington Luthor wrote: >> >> > I think for large arrays, its best to allocate them from the heap. Use >> > malloc() or new (if using C++). >> >> I've always been told that the heap and stack grow towards each other. >> If this is true, why would it be OK to create the item on the heap, vs >> on the stack? If it's not true, could someone simply explain how this >> works? ILT> You are correct in theory. In practice the heap and stack have ILT> different limits, and the limit on the heap is much larger than the ILT> stack (if running bash, compare ulimit -s and ulimit -v). And if you ILT> worry about portability, on some platforms allocating a large stack ILT> frame will simply fail, and on some other platforms it will require ILT> extra work to emit stack probes to tell the OS that you are ILT> intentionally extending the stack rather than just referencing a ILT> random memory address. ILT> Ian Ian, I did ulimit -s and ulimit -v in a solaris 9 sun machine. ulimit -s returns 8192, ok, but ulimit -s returns unlimited. Does this make sense? Miguel Angel
