At 04:57 PM 2/12/2001 -0300, Branden wrote:
>Dan Sugalski wrote:
> > ...
> > doing software copy-on-write stuff, along with having to make the garbage
> > collector smart enough to deal with multiple PMCs pointing to identical
>memory.
>
>???
>
>I thought that was the big deal of GC! Dealing with many references to the
>same thing and free the thing when there's none more...
Having multiple pointers to the same piece of memory makes many garbage
collectors more complex, since it means that when you move that chunk of
memory you need to change all the pointers to it. If the moveable piece of
memory has only a single pointer to it, it makes things easier and faster,
which is generally a good thing.
I didn't say it wasn't possible, just that it makes things more difficult.
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
