Re: Garbage Collection ???

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:26:03 -0500, Randy Brukardt wrote:

> (And a null-excluding component - by any means - is almost never a good 
> idea.

The idea is good, bad is lthe ack of means to initialize such components
properly. You know what I mean. (:-))

> You always need a "nothing/unknown" indicator.

I am using a scheme when non-null pointer components are initialized to a
stock object. It works, but becomes very uncomfortable when the record
itself is in a generic and the target type is tagged. I need to derive not
only the type itself, but also the stock object type, override its
operations to null/alarm, create the stock singleton etc.

> Null-exclusions are 
> almost exclusively useful for parameters, where you don't need "nothing" 
> simply because you don't make the call in that case.)

and access discriminants, certainly.

However both cases do not feel good. I mean why there should be a pointer?
Is it always a reference semantics? Frequently it is not. But even if the
semantics is indeed referential, why explicit pointer?

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de