On Wed, 6 Dec 2000, Dan Sugalski wrote:
> Non-refcounting GC schemes are more expensive when they collect, but less
> expensive otherwise, and it apparently is a win for the non-refcount
> schemes.
Which is why GC is intimately tied to DESTROY consideration in terms of
Perl. If we intend to honor predictable DESTROY timing, and I think we
should, then we will need to reference count. No ifs, elses or
alternations. Anyone care to refute?
If we're going to be ref-counting anyway then the performance gain of a
non-refcounting GC, avoiding counting, is basically moot. If we're
ref-counting for DESTROY timing then we may as well use that data in the
GC.
I'm not some kind of ref-count true-believer - if you think we should put
this discussion of to a later date then I'm cool. I'm just spoiling for
some Perl 6 work to do and this area seemed ripe for critical development.
-sam
