El 22/04/2011 19:36, Walter Bright escribió:
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2002-08/msg00552.html
I've always been surprised when discussions usually just bring garbage collection as the only alternative to explicit manual memory management. I imagined it as a garbage truck that has its own schedule and may let a lot of trash pile up before passing by. I always naively thought, why not just free immediately when an object gets no references?
Not an expert, so there may be reasons I don't see, but now that Linus says somethnig along the lines, I'll ask. Why not? Isn't it much easier to do refcount++ and refcount--, and if refcount==0 immediately "free()"? Memory will be available to other needs faster, no need for an additional thread, or a lot of memory consumed before the advanced garbage truck decides to come in, or slight pauses when collecting trash (maybe only in old implementations), and the implementation is much simpler...
OK, I knew about that "cyclic references" problem. But Linus doesn't seem to see a big problem and solutions can be found with care...
