Rules governing stack purging

[Dave]

Hi All,

If all that is required is to read a property from a stack, couldn't  
there be some way of loading is "read-only"? e.g. load stack (read  
only) <long_name>

put the cp of stack <long_name> into x

Just a thought.
Dave


On 31 Oct 2006, at 17:48, Dave Cragg wrote:

>
> On 30 Oct 2006, at 22:43, Richard Gaskin wrote:
>
>> Consider your subsequent post:
>>
>>> I just remembered something (third time this week, must be the   
>>> new pills). Aren't "unused" stacks purged from memory by the  
>>> engine  when it needs to reclaim memory? I think I'm referring to  
>>> stacks  without the destryStack set, but which have been closed.  
>>> I seem to  recall reading this somewhere, either in the old  
>>> Metacard docs, or  the MC mailing list from long ago. If it's  
>>> true, I wonder if it  applies to "unopened" stacks in memory too.
>>
>> This implies the engine introduces a "sometimes" rule ("sometime  
>> it does one thing, sometimes something else"), which is generally  
>> bad news.
>
> If this purging actually happens, which I don't know for sure, I  
> don't think it's such a bad thing. It would only affect stacks that  
> have been specifically closed, or that have been put in memory as a  
> result of a direct reference to the stack file. Any subsequent  
> reference just requires the engine to load the stack again. Nothing  
> lost.
>
> I'm still don't see how your suggestion will produce something more  
> "consistent" than the current behavior. Going back to my set and  
> save example:
>
>  set the cProp of stack "C:/myStack.rev" to tData
>  save stack "C:/myStack.rev"
>
> Under your proposal, if the stack's destroyStack property is true,  
> nothing will have changed in the stack. I don't see how this can be  
> considered consistent with anything.
>
> You say you were caught by this, but I'm still not clear what  
> problems it causes. The only situation I can think of is if a  
> second app changed the stack on disk while the first app had it in  
> memory, and the first app expected subsequent references to load  
> the stack from disk again. If this is the case, I don't think it is  
> a normal situation, and we know we have to take care when two apps  
> are mucking around with files. But under your suggestion, if I want  
> to use a stack as a data file, I have to be sure to set it's  
> destroyStack to false. I suspect more people will be caught by that.
>
> Cheers
> Dave
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