Click above to get retro games delivered to your door ever month!

 BLIDISFRG()
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Purpose:
 Display CA-Clipper Summer '87 free pool fragmentation.

 Syntax:
 BLIDISFRG([nuHandle])

 Parameters:
 nuHandle  Output file handle

 Returns:
 None.

 Description:
 This function is used to display a summary of CA-Clipper Summer '87's dynamic
 memory to show the degree of fragmentation, and takes as an optional
 parameter the output destination file handle. Each character position
 represents up to 512 bytes, and adjacent equal characters represent
 contiguous blocks larger than 512 bytes.

 Two memory areas are mapped by this function. The largest area is the far
 heap, often referred to as the FREE POOL, where most of CA-Clipper's memory
 allocations are made. The other is the near heap, a much smaller block of
 contiguous memory (maximum size 64 Kb), which CA-Clipper will use if an
 allocation cannot be satisfied from the free pool.

 The * and * characters are used to indicate blocks of free memory which are
 unused by CA-Clipper, and the two graphics characters * and * are used to
 indicate blocks of memory which are in use, i.e. have been allocated. The
 character * is used to indicate the point at which the next memory
 allocation will occur. A key is shown below the memory map. The reason for
 having two different characters for free blocks and two different characters
 for used blocks is to show where a free or used area is made up of more than
 one block of memory. If only one character was used for each then the
 display would not show the full extent of fragmentation of memory into very
 small blocks.

 The relative sizes of blocks are shown by identical repeated characters,
 since a single character indicates a memory block of less than 512 bytes,
 and a row of four blocks indicates a memory block of approximately 2 Kb. The
 relative fragmentation is shown by the proportion of free blocks to used
 blocks, and by the alternation between free and used blocks, throughout the
 display.

 Once free areas are separated by used areas the free areas become virtually
 unusable except for the storage of small temporary values, which is why
 MEMORY(0) gradually deteriorates and operations which require larger blocks
 of memory such as MEMOEDIT() or indexing will then fail.

 The BLIDISFRG() function may be used during the execution of an application
 to monitor the fragmentation of memory as execution continues. It may also
 be used to view the improvements gained using the BLINKER MEMORY PACK
 command and the BLIMEMPAK() function.

 Note that the CA-Clipper Summer'87 free pool is allocated from DOS on an
 'as-needed' basis. Unless MEMORY(0), BLIMEMPAK(-1) or BLIMEMBLK() are
 executed (which cause CA-Clipper to allocate all available memory to the
 free pool from DOS), this function will reflect only the currently allocated
 free pool.

 Example:
 // Display the memory fragmentation                                         
 //                                                                          
 BLIDISFRG(4)      // Send to the printer