Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!gatech!hubcap!billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu
From: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 )
Newsgroups: comp.sw.components
Subject: Re: Garbage Collection & ADTs
Message-ID: <6625@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 28 Sep 89 19:22:50 GMT
References: <920@scaup.cl.cam.ac.uk>
Sender: news@hubcap.clemson.edu
Reply-To: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu
Lines: 20

From scc@cl.cam.ac.uk (Stephen Crawley):
>> ... With a managed system, the user is given
>> an opportunity to strategically throw away data structures, and
>> thereby free up some space that the garbage collector could not
>> possibly take because it is still "in use".
> 
% Bogus argument!  The case you are talking about is that where the 
% programmer has a pointer to a data structure in a variable that is 
% still in scope, but is not conceptually in use.  You suggest that
% in the case of non-GC'ed storage the programmer could free the space
% early by calling the deallocator.  Well in the GC'ed case, the 
% programmer can arrange that the GC can free the data structure by
% assigning NIL to the variable.    

    No, I was referring to space that is still in use, but which
    has marginal value and could be chucked if necessary.  

    
    Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu