[PD-dev] message passing

[=?X-UNKNOWN?Q?g=FCnter_geiger?=]

On Fri, 7 Jun 2002, Krzysztof Czaja wrote:
> indeed, I would happily choose pre-allocation method -- this is
> a default in 'testmess' class.  But I need to sort out two things:
>
> . how to handle reentrant calls

I see, if I understand it right the fear is you get called again
while your old message might still be useful in some context ?
i am not sure if this can happen within pd, because the messages
are delivered directly from within the method, and recursion on
this level isn't possible ?

> . whether/when to collect the garbage.

>
> My second favourite is the stack method, which, unfortunately,
> requires choosing a more or less arbitrary limit for a passable
> message length.

maybe the easiest way to do it ...

>
> Then, there is a mixed solution of choosing the best method each
> time the function is called, depending on current state of an
> object and on input data size.  But I am afraid it is too
> complicated to maintain separately for every class.
>
> Btw, I have performed a few more tests, this time with randomized
> message lengths, and using another, gcc-2.96-based system.  The
> results for [testmess heap] are much worse than I expected..

might  be an issue of the processor cache ?

Guenter