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