Re: realloc() - frequency, conditions, or experiences about relocation?

Ben Bacarisse to Malcolm McLean:

We have a continuously growing buffer, and we want the
best strategy for reallocations as the stream of
characters comes at us. So, given we now how many
characters have arrived, can we predict how many will
arrive, and therefore ask for the best amount when we
reallocate, so that we neither make too many
reallocation (reallocate on every byte received) or ask
for too much (demand SIZE_MAX memory when the first byte
is received).?

>
Obviously not, or we'd use the prediction.

Not so obvious to me, for the exponential algorithm may be
the best when the distribution of buffer size is /not/
known, whereas Malcolm is interested in the cases when we
know it.

Your strategy for avoiding these extremes is exponential
growth.

>
It's odd to call it mine.  It's very widely know and used.
"The one I mentioned" might be less confusing description.

I think it is a modern English idiom, which I dislike as
well.  StackOverflow is full of questions starting like:
"How do you do this?" and "How do I do that?"  They are
informal ways of the more literary "How does one do this?"
or "What is the way to do that?"

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