> > Note that even if I interpret it
> > according to my a posteriori knowledge of the semantics of U*X systems, it
> > is wrong anyway, since there might be mmap'ed data in this area.
> 
> quite right.  that's the point, i think of the:
> 
> The brk and sbrk functions are historical curiosities left over from ear-
> lier days before the advent of virtual memory management.
> 
> comment in the man page...
> 
> They could go away, and are only used for historical compatibility.

Of course, currently they cannot go away. At least not until someone has
reimplemented malloc in terms of some other system call, e.g. mmap.
--
ws@TooLs.DE     (Wolfgang Solfrank, TooLs GmbH) 	+49-228-985800