Re: newbie Q: storage management

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Jon answers Kaz:

<<> I know that it is possible to instantiate a generic freeing function
> for explicitly destroying objects. But why is there is this lack of
> symmetry in the language?

Basically, this asymmetry is there because the designers did not think
they could "require" GC (at least at the level of the high expectation
of it for things like Lisp, Eiffel, ST, etc.) because many of the
target areas of use would not need (or even require _not_ having) GC.
But, the designers (especially Ada83) really were GC adherents, so
they compromised and suggested that GC would be a very good thing for
implementations to provide, but had to leave the door open for
impls. only supplying manual deallocation.>>>


Jon, I don't think this is the right answer, you are focussing too much
on GC, but the question was not about GC, it was about the asymmetry
(i.e. new is a straight forward primitive, free rquires a messy
instantiation).

In fact the assymetry is quite deliberate, and reflects the fact that
new is safe (cannot result in erroneous execution), but free is dangerous
(and can easily result in erroneous execution if misused).