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wishlist: Get information about a Virtual Memory Area #61

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Expand Up @@ -839,6 +839,23 @@ call could help here, too.

**Use-Case:** Any application that wants to terminate with a signal.

### Get information about a Virtual Memory Area

Applications that wish to understand their own address space currently
have to parse `/proc/self/maps`. This is cumbersome (particularly from a
signal handler), and only works if `/proc` is mounted. It also does not
include the information about how far will a stack region
(`MAP_GROWSDOWN`) be extended by the kernel before triggering a
`SIGSEGV`. Applications needing this information need to resort to
various workarounds.

Exposing this information via a syscall (`prctl(PR_GET_VMA, ...)`) would
avoid this guesswork and would be guaranteed to work in `/proc`-less
environments.

**Use-Case:** `pthread_getattr_np`, checking for stack overflow,
in-process crash handlers examining application memory.

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## Finished Items
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