Re: Garbage collection (was Re: JWZ on s/Java/Perl/)

[Tim Bunce]

On Thu, Feb 15, 2001 at 08:21:03AM -0300, Branden wrote:
> Hong Zhang
> > > A deterministic finalization means we shouldn't need to force
> programmers
> > > to have good ideas. Make it easy, remember? :)
> >
> > I don't believe such an algorithm exists, unless you stick with reference
> > count.
> 
> Either doesn't exist, or is more expensive than refcounting. I guess we have
> to make a decision between deterministic finalization and not using
> refcounting as GC, because both together sure don't exist.
> 
> And don't forget that if we stick with refcounting, we should try to find a
> way to break circular references, too.

As a part of that the weak reference concept, bolted recently into perl5,
could be made more central in perl6.

Around 92.769% of the time circular references are known to be circular
by the code that creates them (like a 'handy' ref back to a parent node).
Having a weakref, or similar, operator in the language would help greatly.

Tim.