Re: Really more GC talk (was: Reading a line of arbitrary length)

[fjh@mundook.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson)]

kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) writes:

>fjh@murlibobo.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson) writes:
>> kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) writes:
>> 
>>>It seems to me that by omission the Ada 95 (or 83, for that matter)
>>>reference manual establishes that the "defined standard minimal interface"
>>>is one without programmer control or API.  Anything on top of that is
>>>implementation-specific.
>> 
>> Well, by omission it also implies that only conservative garbage
>> collection can be used -- or at least that memory areas used by the
>> foreign language interface must be conservatively scanned.  This is a
>> potentially undesirable constraint to place on implementations.
>
>No, it implies that only conservative garbage collection is standardized.

OK, if you want to be pedantic... yes, I left out the word
"standard-conforming" before "implementations".

The standard implies that standard-conforming implementations can use
only conservative garbage collection, and that implementations that use
non-conservative GC techniques cannot be standard-conforming.

That still seems to me to be a potentially undesirable constraint to
place on standard-conforming implementations.

--
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>   |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>   |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3         |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.