I've never used perl under MS-DOS, and I haven't used MS-DOS for 10+ years, but I do vaguely remember a similar situation with an early DOS port of REXX that effectively blocked access to extended memory. I don't recall whether that was EMS or XMS (or even what the difference is though I knew once).

I suspect that the problem is not that Perl is using all the extended memory, but rather that it is trampling on something that effectively blocks access to it.

I tried to think of some way to verify this suspicion, I even dug out a couple of old MS-DOS internals books that I keep for "thems's was the days" purposes, but nothing leaped off the index or contents pages that looked like it would help:(

Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail

In reply to Re: Is (DOS-)Perl a Memory Hog? by BrowserUk
in thread Is (DOS-)Perl a Memory Hog? by Neuroactive

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.