Github user pwendell commented on a diff in the pull request: https://github.com/apache/spark/pull/1165#discussion_r14801587 --- Diff: core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/storage/MemoryStore.scala --- @@ -141,6 +174,86 @@ private class MemoryStore(blockManager: BlockManager, maxMemory: Long) } /** + * Unfold the given block in memory safely. + * + * The safety of this operation refers to avoiding potential OOM exceptions caused by + * unfolding the entirety of the block in memory at once. This is achieved by periodically + * checking whether the memory restrictions for unfolding blocks are still satisfied, + * stopping immediately if not. This check is a safeguard against the scenario in which + * there is not enough free memory to accommodate the entirety of a single block. + * + * This method returns either a fully unfolded array or a partially unfolded iterator. + */ + def unfoldSafely( --- End diff -- Could this use a proper type parameter (e.g. `Iterator[T]`) instead of using `Any`? If we need to cast the result to a more general `Iterator[Any]` for putting it in the block manager that's fine. We should try to use as specific a type as possible in each case (currently the code takes the result of this and casts `Iterator[Any]` to `Iteratory[T]` which is scary).
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