> Some system call "get_free_pages", maybe... If it's getting low,
> don't do <something> you were about to do??
>
> This requires cooperative tasks, but many programs could be
> "taught" to cooperate, just put such a call into malloc().
AmigaOS (and probably some others) has/had a function where you could
install a low-memory handler for each process.
When the system ran low on ram, it would iterate through the
process table telling a process to free something.
As an example, a text-editor could then save undo buffers etc to
tmp workspace until needed, or a graphical program could purge
off-screen buffers etc...
This does of course mean that a lot of userspace apps need rewriting
to support the new feature, and not all apps are written in a way that
they can discard unused parts (even temporarily).
regards,
Dave.
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