On Mon, 15 Aug 2005 12:40:05 +0100, Adrian Howard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 15 Aug 2005, at 02:13, David Formosa ((aka ? the Platypus)) wrote: > >> After a very fruitful discussion I've rewritten my suggested GC API. >> Comments please. > [snip] > > I'm speaking from complete ignorance since I've only been vaguely > following the subject... but four additional things that strike me as > useful (because I found them so in Pop-11 when I used it) would be:
Stealing usefull things from other langagues is good. > 1) Some way of declaring objects as being "fixed" so we can pass them > to external code without having to worry about the GC moving them > around. I think that the FFI would take care of that via handels. [...] > 2) Some way of being able to tell the garbage collector to ignore the > current contents of the heap for the purposes of GC. One Pop-11 idiom > was to do something like: Part of that is why we have the GC::tardy traint and C<no GC::delay>. But C<no GC::destroy> preventing the desctruction of objects in its lexical scope. [...] > 3) Some way of marking structures/fields so their reference doesn't > count. Weakrefs basically. I have strongly thought about adding weakrefs into the API. However I recall $larry basically saying the need for weak refs means you have got your design wrong. However google doesn't seem to find it. Unless I hear words otherwise I'll add it in the next revision. > 4) Hooks to run code before/after GC. Occasionally very useful. (e.g. > with the gc hooks and heap locking/unlocking you could implement your > own ephemeral GC system in Pop-11). Not all GC's have before and after concepts. (pure refcounting and mulithreaded models for example). I think that these hooks would be added via the object interface. > Hopefully this makes some vague sort of sense. Thankyou it was helpfull. -- Please excuse my spelling as I suffer from agraphia. See http://dformosa.zeta.org.au/~dformosa/Spelling.html to find out more. Free the Memes.
