sbrk() does allocate memory of the size you want. Instead it allocates memory in chunks of the size of the system page. Thus, if you want to allocate a few bytes, you will get something like 4 KB instead, which is wasteful. Also, sbrk() is a syscall, so it's not available in OP's use case: he has not implemented it.
The author of the post is actually a "she," not a "he." I hate to be pedantic, but I think it's important to not assume authors of technical posts are men.
First, that is my bad. I read the contents of the post, not the title of the blog. Also, I do use "he" as "he or she", because of the influence of both the American culture and the Russian language in which the idea that the male gender is the default is very strong.
Second, no I should not assume. Women and tech have a complex enough relationship as is, and I fully support making our industry more inclusive
Third, you should not assume either. A name is not enough to determine someone's sex or gender. It is then safest to use "they" or even ze or zhe [1], though obviously very few people do. I also hate to be pedantic :).
I actually did not assume based on her name. (There's nothing worse than a correction that is itself wrong.) I tried to find a biography of her in the third person, but could not find one. From her About page, I found out she was a member of Pyladies, which describers itself as an all-woman group. At that point, I felt I did my due diligence.
It really is an important point, not pedantry, to not assume based on names because many cultures have names that sound like the other gender to American ears (and vice versa, no doubt).
I've been seeing a lot of "singular they" lately, even though it goes against what I was taught many years ago in school. One question though: would you yous "they is", or "they are" if you are referring to a singular person?
Languages develop. I was told never to use "due to" instead of "because". Told never to use "quote" instead of "quotation". And, I was told that "horrific" was not a word.
All of those things are no longer true, based on my casual reading of the New York Times.
(Note - I was also told to use "He" as the generic case for singular person. Outside of english 11/12, I've never used anything other than "they" - and have never had anyone comment on it. "They" as the singular person form is fine, and avoids the gender confusion.)
"they are". not a native speaker but we were thaught "they" as the proper way to refer to a single person of unknown gender when I studied for my CPE certificate.
Yes, it is. It's called the "singular 'they'", but some native English speakers were taught that it's incorrect. The controversy over it seems to be an American thing, that at some point in the 19th century someone wrote in a style guide that it's improper grammar, and the meme stuck.
But it's perfectly correct: English writers have been using both the singular 'they' continuously for hundreds of years (14th century?). It also has equivalents in other west European languages (e.g. the German neuter gender and the French ils for a group of people of indeterminate gender), so it's not an English invention either.
Ah, I just found it on Wikipedia, in the article on singluar they...
"Though semantically singular or ambiguous, singular they remains morphologically and syntactically plural (e.g. it still takes plural forms of verbs)."
