memory mapped files

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EarlyFirst
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Post by EarlyFirst »

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/defau ... namemo.asp


just wondering if this could be helpfull to us?
anyone with any ideas?
devo
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Post by devo »

sorry, but I don't think so. Memory mapped files have been around for some time (at least in Unix and Windows NT systems) and its not really a performance boosting feature in itself.

There are probably other examples, but the biggest use is to let the OS manage I/O and caching of a file, instead of you having to include that functionality in your own code. The memory-mapped file works a bit like the swap file. Only it's dedicated to manage a certain adress space in your process(es), so when your program access an address in that memory space, the OS will make sure the correct part of the file is in the memory at that address.
I don't know exactly about Windows NT, but Unix systems usually use this feature for loading shared libraries (DLL's in Windows) - they just map the whole library file to a certain address space.
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