From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2002-08-16T07:24:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Data_Make_Struct Considered Dangerous?

On Fri, Aug 16, 2002 at 05:55:16AM +0900, William Djaja Tjokroaminata wrote:
> 2) Second, the "danger" in Data_Make_Struct comes from ALLOC and even
> from the Data_Wrap_Struct itself, which may invoke the garbage
> collector.  However, I still do not get the answer why I ever need to
> use ALLOC instead of malloc and its derivatives.  For example,
> ignoring run-out-of-memory problem, a C statement such as

If you ignore the out-of-memory situation, then there is no need to use
ALLOC.  The point of ALLOC is that a) you may want to free memory
periodically and b) if you are out of memory, malloc will fail and ALLOC
will not.  If this is not a problem for you, or if you need to do your
own memory allocation that does not involve malloc, then do not use
ALLOC.

Some of us do have to worry about out-of-memory situations.  For these
cases, ALLOC makes perfect sense.

I have other code that uses operator new to allocate memory for objects
in Ruby extensions.  In C++, this makes perfect sense.

Use whichever method of allocation makes sense in your application.

Paul