realloc english translation

[utzoo!decvax!duke!chico!harpo!cbosg!teklabs!tekmdp!azure!randals]

(I sent this out on January 6, 1982.  My netnews coordinator
tells me it went into the void.  If you have seen this before,
excuse the reiteration.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A plea for english translation:

malloc(3) says:
     "...

     Realloc also works if ptr points to a block freed since the
     last call of malloc, realloc or calloc; thus sequences of
     free, malloc and realloc can exploit the search strategy of
     malloc to do storage compaction.

     ..."

Has anyone translated this sentence into reality?  I'd like to think
that there is some useful feature being described here, but can't for
the life of me handle the "tr <man-style >english" translation.

I won't flame (as everyone else has) about the quality of the
UNIX manuals.  That wouldn't be fair -- taking attacks at a
defenseless book.  Instead, I congratulate the people that set up
this news system, so that questions like the one I pose here can
be answered.  No matter how good manuals are, people ALWAYS ask
questions.  Sure, a little extra effort on the manuals would have
been appreciated, but if Bell is anything like the real world,
there are many other things to work on besides manuals (like
getting products out the door).

Randal L. Schwartz (...!{ucb,dec}vax!teklabs!tekmdp!randals)
Microcomputer Development Products
Tektronix, Inc.