Giving C a superpower: custom header file (safe_c.h)

Post by kerkeslager » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 7:24 PM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #184

kerkeslager wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that a blanket should/shouldn't recommendation for arenas isn't right. Arenas are a tradeoff: Pros: preallocating one arena is likely faster than many smaller allocations. Cons: preallocation is most effective if you can accurately predict usage for the arena; if you can't, then you either overshoot and allocate more memory than you need, or undershoot and have to reallocate which might be less performant tha…

>If you aren't preallocating and just using arenas for to free in a group, then I'm going to say using an arena for stuff that is going to be freed by the OS at program exit is adding complexity for no benefit What makes you think that the program is going to exit anytime soon? Arenas are useful if you want to execute a complex workflow and when it is over just blow away all the memory it accumulated. An HTTP server…

Post by winrid » Mon, Nov 24, 2025, 1:14 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #179

winrid wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the most predictable and has much less overhead than a moving collector.

Only when we forget about the impact of cycle collections, or domino effects stoping the world when there is a cascade of counters reaching zero. The optimisatios needed to improve such scenarions, are akin to a poor man's tracing GC implementation.

Post by dboon » Tue, Nov 25, 2025, 4:08 PM UTC

CyberDildonics wrote: post #218

electroly wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MSVC is a C++ compiler toolchain and it does not contain any JavaScript. You're thinking of VSCode, probably, but your comment was an off-topic rant either way.

Microsoft visual studio the IDE (not vs code the electron program) has lots of javascript processes running in the background doing all sorts of things. Also my comment was a single sentence with a single fact so it can't be a rant.

Post by gebdev » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 3:31 PM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #161

gebdev wrote: post #142

This is a great example of how ADTs can be implemented in C by emulating classes, despite the loss in brevity. For the first item on reference counting, batched memory management is a possible alternative that still fits the C style. The use of something like an arena allocator approximates a memory lifetime, which can be a powerful safety tool. When you free the allocator, all pages are freed at once. Not only is th…

> This is a great example of how ADTs can be implemented in C by emulating classes, despite the loss in brevity. I don't see it that way, mostly because ADTs don't require automatic destructors or GC, etc, but also because I never considered a unique/shared pointer type to be an abstract data type > When you free the allocator, all pages are freed at once. Not only is this less error prone, but it can decrease perfor…