• van eeshan (23/23) Aug 18 2004 Three questions for Walter:
• Walter (6/29) Aug 19 2004 Yes.

"van eeshan" <vanee hotmail.net> writes:

Three questions for Walter:

1) why does memset() do the following instead of using a "stosd"
instruction?

xor eax, eax
loop:
mov [dst], eax
mov [dst+4], eax
mov [dst+8], eax
mov [dst+12], eax
mov [dst+16], eax
...
add dst, 32
dec ecx
jne loop

Is the latter faster than a stosd?


2) when duplicating array content (array.dup), the code allocates an
equivalently sized chunk from the heap, clears it all to zero (using memset,
as above), and then does a memmove() to copy the source-data.  Surely the
memset() is entirely redundant?


3) when creating a new array, it is cleared to the default value for the
type (e.g. 0xff for char[]). If you subsequently extend the array size via
"array.length = ", the content is memset() to zero: /not/ to the default
value. Why is that?

"Walter" <newshound digitalmars.com> writes:

"van eeshan" <vanee hotmail.net> wrote in message
news:cg14ch$2gnq$1 digitaldaemon.com...
 Three questions for Walter:

 1) why does memset() do the following instead of using a "stosd"
 instruction?

 xor eax, eax
 loop:
 mov [dst], eax
 mov [dst+4], eax
 mov [dst+8], eax
 mov [dst+12], eax
 mov [dst+16], eax
 ...
 add dst, 32
 dec ecx
 jne loop

 Is the latter faster than a stosd?

Yes.


 2) when duplicating array content (array.dup), the code allocates an
 equivalently sized chunk from the heap, clears it all to zero (using

memset,
 as above), and then does a memmove() to copy the source-data.  Surely the
 memset() is entirely redundant?

Probably.

 3) when creating a new array, it is cleared to the default value for the
 type (e.g. 0xff for char[]). If you subsequently extend the array size via
 "array.length = ", the content is memset() to zero: /not/ to the default
 value. Why is that?

Bug.