vopen() and vclose()

The function vopen() initializes the vmm system. The file $$$$vmem.tmp is created on a disk. This is the temporary memory file where the matrices are stored in row major order. You can specify the disk for opening the file on through the environment variable TMP. Use the DOS command SET TMP=D: before running your YAMP program. This will tell the program to use the D drive for the virtual file. The current disk is used if you do not use the environment variable. If you use a RAM disk, then the paging scheme is reasonably fast. There is a performance penalty for using a physical disk. Note that the vmm file can grow as large as 32 megabytes, so your decision to use a RAM disk hinges on the space requirements of your application. There can be at most 65536 blocks, each at 512 bytes, so there can be at most 33,554,432 bytes (or 32,768 Kbytes) in $$$$vmem.tmp.

vopen() is called when the first virtual matrix is constructed, so it does not need to be called for the matrix application.

vclose() closes the virtual memory file and shuts down the virtual memory pointers. This function should be called before exiting the program. If vclose() is not called, $$$$vmem.tmp is not deleted from the disk.