Memory mapping files

Every now and again I dig up my old MUD language (AMUL /SMUGL) and tinker with the source code. Some time last year I used it to explore various optimization/profiling tools and found a large portion of the compilation process was taken up with simple disk IO, and almost all of it on reads: I’d found myself an excuse to experiment with mmap().

I quickly found that while Windows doesn’t support mmap() but it provides its own, in some ways superior, MapViewOfFile. Ultimately, both systems return you a pointer to address space where the file’s contents will magically appear in memory for you without needing to call read() etc.

I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to use both systems, and they are similar enough that I was able to do so while building a simple “MappedFile” C++ class wrapper for the process. For source, see http://www.kfs.org/oliver/code/io_mapped_file/ – there’s also a Linux-based mmap() vs read() comparison, and a poor-man’s grep/find example app.

Revision Control

Revision Control System Usage Pain breakdown:

• 40% your perception you only have to use it because they think you’re going to make stupid mistakes,
• 50% shame that they were right when you have to revert,
• 10% all revision control systems are a pain to use.