At 11:50 AM 8/20/01 -0400, Mark Lundquist wrote:

>In the software industry overall, garbage collection is high on the "must
>have" list for an implementation language. . . . .  etc., etc., etc.

WHEW!

That was quite a dissertation!

But very well thought out.

Just my two cents worth, from the days, MANY years ago, when I did a lot of
work with compilers.

There really are two issues here:

         1.      Garbage Collection, meaning to reclaim memory, say in the
heap, to make
                 it available for new elements.

         2.      Memory (Heap) Fragmentation.

1. tends not to be a performance issue, even in most hard real time
systems.  Compaction algorithms to recover from 2., and when they are
executed, are usually the real performance issues.  Although I have not
looked at a Garbage Collection algorithm (in the larger sense, involving
both 1 and 2), for any compiler recently, I'm guessing that part of the
problem with contemporary C-class compiler writers is they use simplistic
algorithms, and don't particularly care to distinguish between 1 and 2.

Does anyone know for sure?

sro

S. Ron Oliver, semi-retired professor of Computer Science and Computer
Engineering.  www.csc.calpoly.edu/~sroliver

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