Re: Garbage Collection

[nevin1@ihlpf.ATT.COM (00704a-Liber)]

[followups to comp.lang.misc]

In article <26358@cca.CCA.COM> g-rh@CCA.CCA.COM.UUCP (Richard Harter) writes:
>	There is problably something I am missing, but I don't quite see
>how you can implement garbage collection in C without collateral assumptions
>-- how is the garbage collector supposed to know that that a block is free?

The only way to do this is to allocate a giant heap with malloc()
and do *all* the memory management on your own.  It is no different
than implementing in C or C++ a language that does automatic garbage
collection.


The problem I found with languages that do automatic garbage collection is
that there is no way for me to modify the implementation of the class (or
the type, for those of you unfamiliar with C++ lingo :-)) to make it better
suit my needs.

For applications where the programmer cost is greater than the run-time
cost (such as prototypes, personal tools, one-shot programs), I tend to use
languages with built in memory management.  For other applications, however,
I would rather use a language like C++ which allows me to change the
implementation of a class without affecting the rest of my code.
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