Well, first of NT is... different. Not sure if it's sane or superior or whatever. Second, you may be right that this behavior causes problems, but it clearly h

Well, first of NT is... different. Not sure if it's sane or superior or whatever. Second, you may be right that this behavior causes problems, but it clearly has advantages as well. You advocate copy-on-write semantics elsewhere. Well this behavior is basically that. Third, dlmalloc() which is pretty widely used, uses sbrk(). Forth, I sense a whole lot of frustration targeted at "these damn Linux kids". Sorry you feel that way. On the plus side, it's Friday, and this particular Linux kid would gladly buy you a beer to help cheer you up. (Technically, I grew up with NetBSD, not Linux. Wrote a toy allocator for it at one point, and am trying to work on one that works for Linux as well.)