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From: AST@postman.hsn.no (Alf Steinbach)
Subject: Re: Reference Counting (was Re: Searching Method for Incremental Garbage Collection)
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Message-ID: <AST.178.785265972@postman.hsn.no>
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 1994 17:26:12 GMT
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References: <3ai2ol$3ua@gate.fzi.de> <CzHCvp.9rM@rheged.dircon.co.uk>
Organization: Nordland College
Keywords: storage garbage collection incremental search method
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.c:117228 comp.lang.c++:99552 comp.lang.lisp:15706

In article <CzHCvp.9rM@rheged.dircon.co.uk> simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk (Simon Brooke) writes:
>From: simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk (Simon Brooke)
>Subject: Reference Counting (was Re: Searching Method for Incremental Garbage Collection)
>Keywords: storage garbage collection incremental search method
>Date: Fri, 18 Nov 1994 20:28:35 GMT
>In article <3ai2ol$3ua@gate.fzi.de>, Ulrike Koelsch <koelsch@fzi.de> wrote:
>>Hello everybody,
>>
>>I am searching for a method of incremental garbage collection working on the 
>>storage of an object-oriented database system.
>>
>>
>
>I'm following up to the net, rather than mailing as Ulrike suggests,
>because I know people who understand these things better than I will
>probably disagree with what I have to say, and in the hope that by
>following their responses (if any) I can understand why I am wrong.
>
>I've always believed that a reference counting garbage collector had a
>lot going for it, particularly in systems which require continuous

Reference counting DOES NOT WORK when you have circular data structures,
which almost every program has.  Thus, reference counting is a special
case solution, to be used *within a program*, like the concept of a
free-list or whatever other specialized memory management.

I'm surprised that so many people have been recommending reference
counting garbage collection in this conference (if I've understood the
mailings about "intelligent pointers" correctly).  What's the state of
computer science education when ideas like this can flourish like they do?
