Why isn't closing a program or game instantaneous?

On Thu, 18 Oct 2018 11:07:39 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 17/10/2018 17.38, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Wed, 17 Oct 2018 03:49:37 +0100, Carlos E.R.
wrote:

On 16/10/2018 15.38, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Tue, 16 Oct 2018 01:47:33 +0100, Ant wrote:

Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
When you close a program or game, provided you're not saving a file,
why doesn't it happen immediately? What on earth has it to do?

Probably using a lot of resources like memories, storage, etc.

But stopping using those should be instant. Just mark them as empty.

Maybe it has to go through a long list and marking each one as free or
whatever, in the correct order. Or worse, it has to load each resource
from disk for some reason before clearing it. Maybe it fills them with
zeroes before releasing them.

I can't see the need for that, it should just say to Windows "this area
of memory is now available for use" then close.

You don't, but they do :-P

If it is a hundred areas, they have to loop through all of them.

Reporting 100 address ranges which are now free takes under a second.

Maybe it has to do something online, like log off, if it is one of those
games.

No, that's disabled.

Maybe they don't care :-p

You may be right there.

Maybe it checks for some thing, or writes some data to some file.
Status, scores... maybe it has to calculate those first.

No, this still happens if I save the game first, then when exiting I say
"don't save".

It still can do it.

Only if written terribly.