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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Garbage Collection in Ada
Date: 1996/10/16
Message-ID: <dewar.845505498@merv>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 189949710
references: <01bbb910$f1e73f60$829d6482@joy.ericsson.se>
 	<199610132138291604607@dialup101-6-14.swipnet.se>
 	<Pine.GSO.3.93.961014050707.23547A-100000@sky.net>
 	<19961015122319668722@dialup98-6-12.swipnet.se> <dewar.845388021@merv>
 <OHK.96Oct16081802@edeber.tfdt-o.nta.no>
organization: New York University
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-10-16T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


"Yes, but is this really a problem? What you really want to avoid is
the program gobbling up ever-increasing amounts of memory over
time. If you have global variables around pointing to objects, it is
possibly just because you need to avoid egtting your structure
deallocated! When I learned Simula after having programmed in Fortran
for some time, it took some time to adjust to the new environment, but
I experienced GC as a clear advantage. But then I didn't do real-time
systems in Simula...."


Absolutely, it is definitely a problem. I have seen it in my own code, and
in the code of many SPITBOL users. A typical problem is that you are 
accumulating stuff because for example you main a cross-reference list, 
and you don't need to reference dead stuff any more, but you forget
that this list is still holding on to it. 

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