From help-request at octave dot org Thu Sep 16 14:24:30 2004
Subject: Continuous block of memory to create a variable
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: Keith Goodman <kwgoodman at gmail dot com>
Cc: help at octave dot org
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 15:20:01 -0400

On 16-Sep-2004, Keith Goodman <kwgoodman at gmail dot com> wrote:

| Does Octave, like Matlab, require a continuous block of memory to
| create a variable?

What kind of variable?  A matrix is made up of a contiguous block of
memory for the elements plus a few other data members for the size,
etc. that are not part of that block of memory.

The structure for an octave_value object (which can contain one of a
number of different data types) is allocated from a larger contiguous
block of memory (in an attempt to speed up allocations) but the
individual components may point to different blocks of memory.

A cell array can contain multiple octave_value objects which need not
be contiguous.

An Octave variable is actually an entry in a symbol table that
ultimately refers to an octave_value object.  Symbol records in the
symbol table are currently allocated individually with ::new, so they
are not likely to occupy contiguous blocks of memory.

Why do you ask?

jwe



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