On 1/9/13 11:18 AM, Mehrdad wrote:
On Wednesday, 9 January 2013 at 18:46:53 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
GC is a necessary requirement for memory safety, but not sufficient.
Walter, would you mind explaining WHY it's "necessary"?
I just spent so many comments explaining why NO form of automatic memory
management is required for guaranteeing memory safety () and then you
reply and say "GC is a necessary requirement" and leave it at that.
See my comment here regarding handles, etc.:
http://forum.dlang.org/thread/mailman.232.1357570887.22503.digitalmar...@puremagic.com?page=7#post-jimseaovuxmribkqbict:40forum.dlang.org
This is true but uninteresting. Entire classes of languages can be made
memory-safe without garbage collection, such as many Turing incomplete
languages, languages without referential structures, languages that
don't expose pointers (such as your example) and more.
At the end of the day if references are part of the language and
programs can build arbitrary reference topologies, safety entails GC.
Andrei
