Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1995 11:55:05 -0700 (MST)
From: Quantum Porcupine <jshagam AT nmsu DOT edu>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: Re: Declaring arrays inside generic function

On Thu, 30 Nov 1995, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> 
> On Tue, 28 Nov 1995, Quantum Porcupine wrote:
> 
> > > I have a generic function which has as one of its input parameters an int 
> > > which identifies an array size. Within the function, I attempt to declare 
> > > an array of int's:
> > > 
> > > int item_count [array_size];
> > > 
> > > where array_size is the input parameter. When I look at the array in the 
> > > debugger (gdb) however, what i see is an array of int pointers (I think) 
> > > - something like int (*) [60000] (the 60000 is approximate). If I 
> >
> > That's probably due to the old 64k segment limit imposed by DOS... it's 
> > probably just splitting it across many segments like any coder who's 
> > worked in realmode (yeah, I know, this is pmode, weird huh?) has done 
> > many times...
> 
> DJGPP doesn't impose that limit at all.  When you call a DOS function 
> (like write()) from DJGPP it breaks your data into chunks that DOS can 
> grok and feeds them in sequence.  Anyway, even this has nothing to do 
> with this thread main issue which doesn't involve any DOS calls 
> whatsoever.
> 
Well, I remember reading something in some DJGPP-specific code which had 
a comment like "Stupid compiler won't allocate more than 64k" or 
something weird... I thought this was odd, but I haven't done much with 
DJGPP anyway.  For anyone interested, this was in DEVIL, the Descent 
level editor (comes with full source).  I know that pmode has no such 
segmentation limit, but DJGPP could easily impose it anyway.  Of course, 
perhaps in an old version of DJGPP it only uses word-sized array sizes 
(that could be what the author of DEVIL was referring to), who knows?


    ________________________________________________________________________
   / Joshua Shagam                    /    (Quantum Porcupine / Versatile) /
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 Stop the execution of King Louis XIV!  If you agr-- oops, too late! :)