[DGD]LPC- and Kernel-library questions

[birgit.schulte at philips.com]

Hiyas,

two things which riddle my brain and I failed to figure out so far:

In the driver of the kernel-lib there is this function:

private mixed call(mixed what, string func)
{
    object obj;

    obj = what;
    what = allocate(TLS_SIZE);
    return call_other(obj, func);
}

Comment says, it provides thread local storage. Obviously, this is done by
what = allocate(TLS_SIZE);
Now, could anyone explain what exactly happens here? What is it good for to
allocate some memory assigned to the variable what?
Or rather more to the point: what does this concept of thread local storage stand for?

Next one is probably just my lack of knowledge:
The kfun catch is documented as to take two statements (a,b) and to evaluate them.
In the auto object of the kernel lib in function compile_object there is a part:
catch { some statements} : { some more statements }

Is this a C-construct which I failed to find, or is it LPC-specific?

Thanx in advance for possible enlightenment,
Birgit

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