Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov> writes:
> On 05 Jul 1999 10:08:10 -0400 
>  Mirian Crzig Lennox <lennox@alcita.com> wrote:
> 
>  > Something I've been wondering about lately...
>  > 
>  > Why does tsleep() take a hardcoded string as its mnemonic wchan value?
>  > I can't imaging this would be any more informative than a simple
>  > symbol address (especially since we only display the first 6 chars of
>  > it anyway), and it seems a bit of a waste of memory to have all those
>  > extra strings in the kernel image.
> 
> Having that string available is *really nice* sometimes, as it indicates
> where the code is blocked, even though each thread may be blocked on a
> unique wchan value.

Understood... but it seems you could still save some memory by
replacing the string parameter with a symbol address (*in addition to*
the actual wchan address).  Why maintain (effectively) two distinct
symbol tables in kernel memory?

-- 
Mirian Crzig Lennox                                Systems Anarchist
  "Don't follow leaders... watch the parking meters."  --Bob Dylan