[PATCH] top: fix parsing of /proc/meminfo

Cathey, Jim jcathey at ciena.com
Tue Jul 22 17:07:15 UTC 2014


>Am I missing something here?  There is no structure, just a character 
>pointer.  If you leave off "static" it will be compiled as an 
>instruction that pushes a constant onto the stack, by any/every compiler.

Which is probably _larger_ code than just referring to something
stored in the .text/.data segment.  It's copying something that is
found in text/data into the stack space, then referring to that
address thereafter.  The compiler has to do:

	Copy A->B
	Then use &B.

-vs-

	Use &A.

You do this when you want the ability to modify B.
If A is fixed and inviolate, you mark it static const
and be done with it.  What this turns into, exactly,
depends upon your compiler, CPU, and ABI, but I can't
think of any case where the extra copy is going to
turn out _better_ than the simpler case.

-- Jim



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