Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]


Groups > comp.lang.c > #99457

Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines?

From Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk>
Newsgroups comp.lang.c
Subject Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines?
Date 2016-12-15 08:36 +0000
Organization Fix this later
Message-ID <o2tkjb$ln3$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References (6 earlier) <1b1sxauo96.fsf@pfeifferfamily.net> <o2skdb$cfs$1@dont-email.me> <1btwa6t4ij.fsf@pfeifferfamily.net> <o2soqd$och$1@dont-email.me> <1bfulpuage.fsf@pfeifferfamily.net>

Show all headers | View raw


On 15/12/16 03:40, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
> Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> writes:
>
>> On 15/12/16 00:33, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
>>> Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> writes:
>>>
>>>> I did, and practically every application I tried to use would fall
>>>> over within a few minutes (or, sometimes, within a few seconds).
>>>
>>> That's weird.  How much swap did you have?
>>
>> Several tons. Truckloads.
>
> Wow.  All I can say is that's surprising.

I was surprised, too, at first, and then later on I realised that 
actually it wasn't so surprising after all. Because the big problem is...

>
>>> Well, they're expecting overcommit.

...that.

>>
>> Well, they shouldn't.
>
> You have to have expectations.  If 99+% of the systems you're running on
> have overcommit, it's not a bad assumption.

Yes it is! It's always a bad assumption! It's an assumption that leads 
to sloppy memory management. And I do realise I'm railing against the 
inevitable, and while we're at it let's bring back the birch and get the 
hell out of Europe and put Churchill back in No 10, and several other 
unattainable ideals which I only mention because, after years and years 
of persistent campaigning, one of them turned out not to be so 
unattainable after all. If someone has got into the terrible habit of 
being lazy about memory management, it may well be too late to change 
his or her ways. But let us at least set a good example and write code 
that uses memory properly.

> The only other real
> possibility is to have some sort of developer-accessible way to check
> the memory pool to decide whether you really need to crash, or if you
> can continue.  If that exists, I'm not aware of it.

"Need to crash"? Thank heaven you're not an airline pilot.

It's a good analogy, actually. (And an illustration, not a proof.)

When things start to go wrong in the air, a good airline pilot 
continually monitors the state of his or her aircraft, warns his or her 
passengers that they may need to fasten their seatbelts, attempts at all 
times to maintain control of the plane, and --- if it turns out that 
there is no way he or she is going to keep it in the air for much longer 
--- try to find a nearby airfield on which to attempt a runway landing 
or, failing that, a road or a bit of flat grass or, in extreme cases, 
the Hudson River. The point is, he or she doesn't just let go of the 
controls and wait for the aircraft to spiral down to the ground and be 
destroyed in a ball of flame that kills everyone on board.

"Need to crash" shows a misunderstanding, and admittedly it is a 
/widespread/ misunderstanding, of what computer programming is actually 
/for/.

-- 
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

Back to comp.lang.c | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread


Thread

Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? DFS <nospam@dfs.com> - 2016-12-13 23:18 -0500
  Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Melzzzzz <mel@zzzzz.com> - 2016-12-14 05:30 +0100
  Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? mark.bluemel@gmail.com - 2016-12-14 00:59 -0800
  Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2016-12-14 10:38 +0000
    Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? DFS <nospam@dfs.com> - 2016-12-14 12:53 -0500
      Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2016-12-14 18:05 +0000
        Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2016-12-14 11:57 -0800
          Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2016-12-14 20:05 +0000
            Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? "James R. Kuyper" <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2016-12-14 15:21 -0500
            Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2016-12-14 12:28 -0800
              Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? supercat@casperkitty.com - 2016-12-14 13:09 -0800
              Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Jean-Marc Bourguet <jm@bourguet.org> - 2016-12-14 22:53 +0100
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2016-12-14 15:47 -0800
            Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-12-14 15:41 -0700
              Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2016-12-14 23:26 +0000
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-12-14 17:33 -0700
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2016-12-15 00:42 +0000
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? supercat@casperkitty.com - 2016-12-14 17:05 -0800
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2016-12-15 08:21 +0000
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? supercat@casperkitty.com - 2016-12-15 09:15 -0800
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2016-12-15 17:50 +0000
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? supercat@casperkitty.com - 2016-12-15 12:15 -0800
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2016-12-15 20:37 +0000
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? raltbos@xs4all.nl (Richard Bos) - 2016-12-15 20:08 +0000
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-12-14 20:40 -0700
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2016-12-15 08:36 +0000
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-12-15 17:43 -0700
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2016-12-16 01:05 +0000
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-12-15 18:34 -0700
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2016-12-15 10:14 -0800
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? raltbos@xs4all.nl (Richard Bos) - 2016-12-15 20:15 +0000
            Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2016-12-15 01:51 -0800
              Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? asetofsymbols@gmail.com - 2016-12-15 06:09 -0800
                Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2016-12-15 17:47 -0800
          Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2016-12-14 12:15 -0800
            Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2016-12-15 10:24 -0800
          Re: overcommit is the plague Noob <root@127.0.0.1> - 2016-12-17 01:17 +0100
      Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2016-12-14 20:19 +0000
        Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? DFS <nospam@dfs.com> - 2016-12-14 17:44 -0500
          Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2016-12-15 00:21 +0000
            Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? mark.bluemel@gmail.com - 2016-12-15 00:56 -0800
              Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2016-12-15 22:08 +0000
      Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Geoff <geoff@invalid.invalid> - 2016-12-14 13:39 -0800
      Re: Why is this outputting alternate blank lines? Ike Naar <ike@iceland.freeshell.org> - 2016-12-16 07:12 +0000

csiph-web