Re: gcopy_avma() is wasting stack memory compared to gcopy()

[Bill Allombert <Bill.Allombert@math.u-bordeaux.fr>]

On Tue, Jul 04, 2017 at 08:11:54AM +0200, Karim Belabas wrote:
> * Jens Schmidt [2017-07-04 07:47]:
> > Hello PARI developer.
> > 
> > PARI Library Guide (PDF) writes: "GEN gcopy_avma(GEN x, pari_sp *AVMA)
> > return a copy of x as from gcopy, except that we pretend that initially
> > avma is *AVMA, and that *AVMA is updated accordingly (so that the total
> > size of x is the difference between the two successive values of *AVMA)."
> > I noticed that gcopy_avma() needs more memory (~ 20%-30%) than gcopy()
> > to create a copy of a GEN object if GEN is of non recursive type, e.g.
> > t_POL or t_SER. Therefore I've written a shot test function to dissect
> > the PARI stack.
> 
> The difference is due to gen_0: gcopy is allowed to keep (or create) pointers
> to "universal objects", which need not be copied, whereas gcopy_avma is
> a low-level function that was used to serialize objects out of a PARI
> session and thus makes a deep copy of everything. It makes a huge
> difference for sparse structures.
> 
> I am not sure a gcopy_avma with the above semantic [which has never been
> documented] is useful anymore, it does not seem to be used in the PARI
> sources any longer; it is present twice: in gclone (where it's
> definitely not needed) and in the pthread interface (where I *believe*
> at this point that it's not needed). I'll investigate.

gcopy_avma is needed for pthread.c, but not with this semantic, since
the threads share the universal constants, but not the same PARI stack.

Cheers,
Bill.