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authorRichard M. Stallman <[email protected]>2005-07-22 22:58:30 +0000
committerRichard M. Stallman <[email protected]>2005-07-22 22:58:30 +0000
commit6696f2a495b6cc41cf0e5f098ca23ed9d0a6ab6b (patch)
tree4744a21efee728afba6cb932a0fa66936a60aac1 /lispref/internals.texi
parent1050234a98ae6757876f8e110283499a410c7c90 (diff)
(Garbage Collection): Clarify previous change.
Diffstat (limited to 'lispref/internals.texi')
-rw-r--r--lispref/internals.texi13
1 files changed, 6 insertions, 7 deletions
diff --git a/lispref/internals.texi b/lispref/internals.texi
index 61b643bd54..5cc0fe6e49 100644
--- a/lispref/internals.texi
+++ b/lispref/internals.texi
@@ -369,15 +369,14 @@ until the subsequent garbage collection, at which time
@end defopt
@defopt gc-cons-percentage
-The value of this variable is the minimum portion of the heap that
-should be allocated before a garbage collection takes place. It is
-used only if the specified size is larger than
-@code{gc-cons-threshold}.
+The value of this variable specifies the amount of consing before a
+garbage collection occurs, as a fraction of the current heap size.
+This criterion and @code{gc-cons-threshold} apply in parallel, and
+garbage collection occurs only when both criteria are satisfied.
As the heap size increases, the time to perform a garbage collection
-increases, so in order to compensate, this variable tries to
-correspondingly reduce the frequency of collection by letting Emacs
-allocate more memory between each collection.
+increases. Thus, it can be desirable to do them less frequently in
+proportion.
@end defopt
The value returned by @code{garbage-collect} describes the amount of