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A comment on Unix's special way of marking login shells goes back to V2 Unix (at least). Parent comment

Re:Unix's special way of marking login shells goes back to V... by tinus_hn on Tuesday December 13, 2022 @08:23AM (#33968473)
You don’t need compaction to reuse fixed size structures. I presume their priorities were with creating a working system, not one that answers to the ‘requirements’ of 50 years into the future.
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Re:Unix's special way of marking login shells goes back to V... by kragen on Thursday December 15, 2022 @01:59AM (#33996210)
you don't need compaction to reuse heap-allocated memory either

wasted memory due to heap fragmentation is very similar to wasted memory due to slack space in fixed-size structure fields

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