GNU Emacs, memory usage, releasing

[Craig Finseth]

In article <IN_S4Eggpc2 at ficc.uu.net> peter at ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>There seems to be an assumption here that the only possible methods are
>buffer gap and a linked list of lines. What about a linked list of larger
>blocks? ...

Think of pure buffer gap and linked line as opposite ends of a
continuum.  (Technically, linked character would be on the one end,
but I will ignore that case.)  Pure buffer gap has one chunk, which is
the entire object.  As you divide it into separate chunks (paged
buffer gap), the number increases and their size decreases.
Eventually, you get to a chunk size of one line and have linked line.

In may of the intermediate cases, whether you use an array or linked
list is an implementation detail.

Craig A. Finseth			fin at msc.umn.edu [CAF13]
Minnesota Supercomputer Center, Inc.	+1 612 624 3375