A word is 2 bytes I think on x86. Then after that there is double-word, quad-word and paragraph, and more nerdy names I'm sure.
Word-aligned means that you can't have a memory address starting at anything that isn't a multiple of 2. So for different types of alignments, let's say it were aligned to N bytes, then you couldn't have a memory address starting at anything that isn't MEM_ADDRESS mod N. -ryan On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, Peter Jay Salzman wrote: > > you'd think by now i'd know stuff like this. i'm embarrased to have to > ask this, but here it goes. > > i'm reading the man page for electric fence, and i'm not fully > understanding the sections on EF_ALIGNMENT and "WORD-ALIGNMENT AND > OVERRUN DETECTION". i feel like i "almost" understand them. > > i think i understand the concept of memory page as being the minimum > chunk of memory the kernel handles internally (8192 bytes minimum > allocation of memory on x86) and alignment, but i guess i don't know > what a word is. > > for example, the man page says that malloc() may be required to return > word aligned memory pages, so in the diagram: > > > 1 page allocated by malloc() > x ------------ > x+1 | | > x+2 | 8192 | > | bytes on | > | x86 | > | | > ------------ > > i guess that places a restriction on what "x" is, but because i don't > know what a word is, i don't know what that restriction is. > > what's a word? :) > > or does it mean that there's a restriction on *size* of the page and not > the starting point? > > pete > > -- > First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, > then you win. -- Gandhi, being prophetic about Linux. > > Fingerprint: B9F1 6CF3 47C4 7CD8 D33E 70A9 A3B9 1945 67EA 951D > _______________________________________________ > vox-tech mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech > _______________________________________________ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
