3.3 Functions to Associate String Labels with Locations

Since the diskheap allocations are stored at arbitrary locations in the heap, there is no way for a program to read from the front of a file to get to administrative information. To help a library know where to make it's "first read" from the diskheap, the library provides the ability to associate locations with a string label. Starting point for an on-disk data structure.

Examples of usage include associated the label `hashstart' with the location of the bucket information for a hash table. You could store the location of the first entry in a linked list with the label `liststart' and the last entry with `listend'. If you are implementing a mini-file system, you could associate the top directory location with the label `root_directory'.

• diskheap_label_set: Associate a label with a diskheap location.
• diskheap_label_get: Get the location associated with a label.
• diskheap_label_get_entry: Get a specific entry from the label array.

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