This article was discussed on Hacker News.
Over the past year I’ve refined my approach to arena allocation.
With practice, it’s effective, simple, and fast; typically as easy to use
as garbage collection but without the costs. Depending on need, an
allocator can weigh just 7–25 lines of code — perfect when lacking a
runtime. With the core details of my own technique settled, now is a
good time to document and share lessons learned. This is certainly not the
only way to approach arena allocation, but these are practices I’ve worked
out to simplify programs and reduce mistakes.