Subj : Re: Writable source equals Reusable source
To   : comp.programming
From : Randy Howard
Date : Fri Aug 19 2005 11:34 pm

CBFalconer wrote
(in article <430624FD.AF618DFE@yahoo.com>):

> Hashlib can easily change that limit in one place in the source. 
> Since a record will rarely be appreciably less that 20 odd bytes,
> that has already allowed for about 160 Mb of storage.  

Which isn't all that much by 2005 standards really.

> Larger
> values are very likely to start using virtual memory, and thrash
> when the content becomes large enough, with quite serious
> degradation of performance.  

This obviously depends a great deal about the target solution.  
If it is for mass consumption, then worrying about memory space 
(while the rest of the industry is gobbling it up like mad) may 
make some sense.  But if you know the app will be hosted on a 
modern system, especially now that even swapping pain can be 
minimized by large RAID arrays, then it's not a problem.  You 
can buy a production system with 4GB of memory today for less 
than the price of a computer that I had to hand solder every 
cap, resistor, memory socket, etc. on with a max of 64K of RAM 
back in the day.  It's also conceivable to have an SMP and/or 
dual-core based server with 64GB of memory for quite a bit more 
money, but when you need it, it's available.  160Meg doesn't 
sound like much stacked up against that.  :-)

-- 
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)

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