>>>>> "DL" == David Leeper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
DL> If I know what I want to destroy and when, can I just turn off Parrot's DL> automatic garbage collector/memory compactor and send it instructons on DL> what I want deleted? i have to jump in here because i am seeing the classic discussion of A and B and they are not the same things. in parrot, GC is separated from DoD. you seem to always conflate the two. in general destruction is not related to GC, it is used to clean up stuff like file handles, complex objects, deal with persistance etc. a destroyed object may have its space reclaimed at some future time. destruction is more of a language feature and GC is more of a VM feature. they are not the same thing and you shouldn't keep talking about them as if they are con-joined twins. you can cause object destruction when you want in most langs that parrot will support. and you can probably initiate a GC pass from most langs if they have an API to get into parrot's GC. but you don't have to do one to do the other. many heap allocated things won't be objects (buffers, strings, etc.) and will be purely GC'ed as needed. some objects can be destroyed simply when their context exits (e.g. leaving a block and destroying any my'ed objects which are dead). those will then be marked for later GC. so please note that destruction is not collection and they are and can be separately controlled. you have to stop thinking c++ (which will probably NOT be directly supported by parrot) and think perlish (or as other dynamic langs) more. perl doesn't have a delete thing and doesn't need one. it can detect DoD on its own and then let parrot GC them later. memory usage and objects are not the same. uri -- Uri Guttman ------ [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------- http://www.stemsystems.com -- Stem is an Open Source Network Development Toolkit and Application Suite - ----- Stem and Perl Development, Systems Architecture, Design and Coding ---- Search or Offer Perl Jobs ---------------------------- http://jobs.perl.org
