Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: jeff@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Why garbage collection?
Message-ID: <DL89vq.9oI.0.macbeth@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
References: <rvillDL4v3n.I8r@netcom.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 15:04:37 GMT
Lines: 10

In article <rvillDL4v3n.I8r@netcom.com> rvill@netcom.com (Richard Villanueva) writes:
>I understand the classical Lisp method of automatic garbage collection,
>and it is very elegant.  It reserves only one bit per cons cell (the
>mark bit).  However, on large systems, the long pause for garbage
>collection is bad, so people look for more sophisticated methods.

These days, GC does not usually involve a long pause and is
probably more efficient than reference counts.

-- jd
