[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#779943: Bug#779943: octave: Enable large arrays: Build octave such that it can use arrays larger than 2 GB

[John W. Eaton]

On 03/06/2015 10:57 AM, Fabrice Allibe wrote:
> Package: octave
> Version: 3.8.2-4
> Severity: wishlist
>
> Dear Maintainer,
>
> the size of a single Octave array cannot exceed 2 GB of memory because octave is not built with "--enable-64" flag

I'm not disputing that a version of Octave built with 64-bit indexing 
enabled would be useful, but on a system with 64-bit pointers and 32-bit 
indexing, the limit for any array is approximately 2^32 *elements* not 
2GB of memory.  The actual amount of memory allocated and used can be 
larger than than 2GB.  This is explained in the Octave manual pages that 
you linked to:

> www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Compiling-Octave-with-64_002dbit-Indexing.html

Also, there can be multiple arrays of up to this size.

jwe