[Rd] memory allocation questions

[Mark.Bravington at csiro.au]

Thanks both

All seems to work now, whether I use R_chk_alloc etc. (as per RS.h) or the Delphi routines. Sounds like I might as well stick with the latter though, since I have to do the housekeeping anyway.

Mark

#>should I bother using the R [memory allocation] routines instead [of the Delphi built-ins]?
#
#There is not much reason to need to use the R routines.  The
#disadvantages of using Delphi allocation are:
#
#  - Your allocations won't be automatically deleted by the garbage
#collector (but neither are those of Calloc, you need R_alloc for that)
#  - If allocation fails, it will be up to you to detect that and deal
#with it.
#
#The disadvantage of using the R routines Calloc etc. is that
#  - You need to translate C macros to Delphi.
#  - You need to worry about whether the RS.h file has changed with
#each release (but the Calloc etc. macros are likely to be very stable,
#they haven't changed since 2000).
#
#Duncan Murdoch
#

#> if I do use the R replacements, what are their names nowadays?
#
#> R-EXTS refers to Calloc, Realloc and Free, but these aren't exported by
#> R.DLL (for R1.9.0 or 1.9.1) and I couldn't find mention of any name
#> change in the NEWS file.
#
#There is no change.  R-exts does say you must include the appropriate 
#headers, in this case include/R_ext/RS.h.  They are defines, and not just 
#simple calls to entry points.  I'll leave you to take a closer look.
#
#-- 
#Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk