Blender memory guarded allocation (mallocn.c)

[mjordan]

Hi!
I'm trying to figure out how the guarded memory allocation works in blender. I'm reading the code inside mallocn.c and I'm struggling against the meaning of two defined macros.

The first one, MAKE_ID, for big endian machines, is defined as:

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MAKE_ID(a, b, c, d) ( (int)(a) << 24 | (int)(b) << 16 | (c) << 8 | (d))

while for little endian machines it's defined as:

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MAKE_ID(a, b, c, d) ( (int)(d) << 24 | (int)(c) << 16 | (b) << 8 | (a))

I can't undestand the "semantic" meaning. Is this a sort of hashing? They give the same results for little and big endian machines? Also, why only the first two parameters are casted to int? What is the logic behind this?

The second defined macro:

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MEMNEXT(x) ((MemHead *)(((char *)x) - ((char *)&(((MemHead *)0)->next))))

My C knowledge can't permit me seeing what it means... Please explain me ...

Thank you in advance...