From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2004-07-20T05:19:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Specification

Mark Sparshatt wrote:
> The problem would come if someone did release an alternate 
> implementation of Ruby with reference counting GC. Then if people who 
> were used to alternate Ruby moved to standard ruby they might expect the 
> same behaviour, and assume it's a bug when standard ruby behaves 
> differently.

In my understanding, ruby makes no guarantees about memory management, 
except that unreferenced objects will eventually get recycled. A ruby 
specification should state explicitly that, aside from this guarantee, 
behavior is unspecified.

Of course, if programmers don't read the spec, they can still get bitten...