MAILING #1

A while back I posted a shared string manager to replace Merc's
and fix the 'read-only/never freed' problem. Due to the complexity
of the code (maybe?) there was only one person interested, Jason Dinkel
since obviously there was not much need until OLC came along.

With my str_dup, free_string the shared heap can be used as the STANDARD
C str_dup while retaining the ability to share strings. Usage counts allow
this. The strings are no longer hashed but I noticed no performance
degradation on Lost Realms. Boot time may increase slightly but that is
only speculation -- I haven't noticed it.

The following mailing will step through the patch into a stock Envy base,
which should be identical to Merc's string stuff.

Mailing number 3 will be the new code module, ssm.c
Three replacement functions are in there:
str_dup(), free_string(), fread_string()

There are also some locals that you need not even look at unless you are
into stupidly complex, mundane pointers and casts. Improvements are almost
certain but I wrote it from top to bottom and thats how it has stayed.

Jason Dinkel intends to use this in his new OLC release so if you dont
have a hacked mud, you may want to wait.

Fusion

Next Mailing....