Memory usage in Spider solitaire

Jim Hawkins

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Oct 27, 2013, 12:54:12 PM10/27/13

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I play spider solitaire on my XP pro machine, but
instead of finishing the games, I save them at the
penultimate move.
Wondering how much RAM this would tie up,
I went on repeating the action, (every saved game
involving a different penultimate position and move.)
I expected eventually to get a message telling me I was
running out of RAM.
However I got as far as having 71 of these games
saved and nothing seems to have happened.
How can this be ?

Jim Hawkins

Jim Hawkins

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Oct 27, 2013, 1:47:51 PM10/27/13

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"Jim Hawkins" <jimha...@manx.net> wrote in message
news:36CdnVwTjvCo2PDP...@supernews.com...

Forgot to specify that all games used the
'medium difficulty (2 suits)' option.

Jim Hawkins

Nil

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Oct 27, 2013, 2:18:16 PM10/27/13

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On 27 Oct 2013, "Jim Hawkins" <jimha...@manx.net> wrote in
alt.comp.os.windows-xp:

The Spider Solitaire that came with my copy of Windows XP Pro will only
save one game. Any time I try to save another game, it asks me if I
want to overwrite the previously saved one. So - I wonder how you could
have 71 saved games.

In any case, a game is saved to a disk file. It does not impact RAM
usage.

VanguardLH

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Oct 27, 2013, 2:18:53 PM10/27/13

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If the saved game were saved in RAM then you couldn't play that saved
game the next time you booted into Windows. Why do you think saved
games are saved in RAM?

Message has been deleted

Auric__

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Oct 27, 2013, 5:32:44 PM10/27/13

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My thoughts exactly. I've never heard of a game that saved to RAM; they
always use this magical device called a "hard drive".

As for how much drive space a saved game uses, I'd guess it to be in the
neighborhood of a few kb at most. All you need to save is what cards are at
what positions in which stacks, plus the number of completed hands and what
suits they are.

--
You weep for those you have ended. I love you for that. You want peace.
But we are created in a world where peace is impossible.

Nil

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Oct 27, 2013, 5:47:41 PM10/27/13

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On 27 Oct 2013, "Auric__" <not.m...@email.address> wrote in
alt.comp.os.windows-xp:

> As for how much drive space a saved game uses, I'd guess it to be
> in the neighborhood of a few kb at most. All you need to save is
> what cards are at what positions in which stacks, plus the number
> of completed hands and what suits they are.

My one allowed saved Spider game takes up 372 bytes.

VanguardLH

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Oct 27, 2013, 8:56:57 PM10/27/13

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Nil wrote:

> "Auric__" wrote:
>
>> As for how much drive space a saved game uses, I'd guess it to be
>> in the neighborhood of a few kb at most. All you need to save is
>> what cards are at what positions in which stacks, plus the number
>> of completed hands and what suits they are.
>
> My one allowed saved Spider game takes up 372 bytes.

... while consuming 4096 bytes for the cluster allocated to that file in
the MFT. 372 file bytes + slack space = cluster allocation.

Jim Hawkins

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Oct 27, 2013, 4:47:58 PM10/27/13

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"VanguardLH" <V...@nguard.LH> wrote in message
news:l4jlee$953$1...@news.albasani.net...

Yes, I should have realized they'd be saved to disk files.

Jim Hawkins