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From: rvill@netcom.com (Richard Villanueva)
Subject: Re: Why garbage collection?
Message-ID: <rvillDL7MKJ.58H@netcom.com>
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Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 06:41:06 GMT
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Erik Naggum (erik@naggum.no) wrote:

: so your AI research supporter (?) was not ill-informed, but what he told
: you was not what you thought you heard.  garbage collection hindered the
: acceptance, but garbage collection was not at fault, the _perception_ of
: garbage collection was the actual cause.

Actually, my friend is a system and network administrator.  I recently got
the free version of Allegro Common Lisp for Windows, and unless I am
horribly mistaken, I saw it pause for a painful length of time to do garbage
collection.  If true, this either means that they are not using superior
algorithms that are well known, or garbage collection is an obstacle after
all.  My comment about reference counts was not meant to say "listen to my
new idea", but only to say "even this old idea would be better than having
to endure such long pauses, so what's the deal?"

: |   Someone else provided the site info.  I'll FTP it.

: it is customary to supplement such vague information with harder
: information if you get it.  I would still like to know where it is.

The garbage collection survey is at ftp.cs.utexas.edu, and the file is
/pub/garbage/gcsurvey.ps.  It is a Postscript file, and I am forced to
confess that I do not know how to read or print it on my Windows machine.

--

+===============================================================+
| Richard Villanueva  |  Art and science cannot exist but in    |
| San Diego, Calif.   |  minutely organized particulars.        |
| rvill@netcom.com    |                        -- William Blake |
+===============================================================+
