Set or get an integer-valued AST global tuning parameter
This routine attempts to execute even if STATUS is set to an error value on entry, although no further error report will be made if it subsequently fails under these circumstances.
All threads in a process share the same AST tuning parameters values.
"
free"
function. If it is non-zero, the memory is not freed. Instead a pointer to it
is stored in a pool of such pointers, all of which refer to allocated but currently unused
blocks of memory. This allows AST to speed up subsequent Object creation by re-using
previously allocated memory blocks rather than allocating new memory using the systems
malloc function. The default value for this parameter is zero. Setting it to a non-zero value
will result in Object memory being cached in future. Setting it back to zero causes any
memory blocks currently in the pool to be freed. Note, this tuning parameter only controls the
caching of memory used to store AST Objects. To cache other memory blocks allocated by
AST, use MemoryCaching.