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Re: Limbo, here I come !!

> 
> >Could you elaborate on this?
> >By 'predictable' are you referring to the fact the GC
> >implementation uses reference counting? How does this
> >influence designs?
> 
> There are TWO garbage collectors, one ref counting the
> other coloring. Both are real-time. You can generate code
> for either. The ref counting is made visible in limbo
> and I find it eliminates lots of clean up and bookkeeping
> code, especially in error cases. You often end up breaking
> things into subroutines or modules that are cleared away
> predictably by the garbage collectors.
> 

This is confusing to me.  I thought the point of garbage collection
was that you don't have to think about the state of the memory after
allocation.  What is the point in exposing details of the implementations
of the garbage collectors unless the application is going to think about
the allocation state of some memory.  And if this is the case, why not
just use an explicit malloc/free management scheme.  Is there some
gray area in between totally explicit management and totally automatic
that eludes me?  Can you give a compelling example why I would want this
in-between type of management?

Later,
FM

--
Frank W. Miller                           Department of Computer Science
fwmiller@cs.umd.edu                 University of Maryland, College Park
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~fwmiller             College Park, Maryland 20742