Path: csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!news.szaf.org!inka.de!mips.inka.de!.POSTED.localhost!not-for-mail From: Christian Weisgerber Newsgroups: comp.lang.awk Subject: Re: (GAWK) Persistent Memory only works on 64-bit systems? Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2025 14:04:22 -0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: Injection-Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2025 14:04:22 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: lorvorc.mips.inka.de; posting-host="localhost:::1"; logging-data="74815"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@mips.inka.de" User-Agent: slrn/1.0.3 (FreeBSD) Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.awk:9961 On 2025-04-19, Kenny McCormack wrote: > And I remembered reading somewhere that the PMA feature works on 64-bit > systems (implying that it *only* works on 64-bit systems). Yes, the README for PMA already says: "Requirements/assumptions include 64-bit machine words (longs and pointers) and reasonable page sizes." > So, I'm curious as to *why* this restriction? Could someone on the dev > team (or other knowledgeable person) comment on this? You'll need to read Terence Kelly's papers and/or the source code for a rationale. It's not really a gawk issue as gawk is simply a consumer and inherits the limitation from the PMA upstream. I.e., I tried to find a quick answer and didn't. Tagged pointers? *quickly looks over support/pma.c* Indeed, I see that the lowest three bits of allocated object pointers are used for flags. -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de