From: Minkoo Seo <minkoo.seo@...>
Date: 2006-05-30T20:39:11+09:00
Subject: Re: object.reference_count

------=_Part_3519_29819917.1148989148076
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

Ruby doesn't have reference counting mechanism and it is good in itself.
Reference counting can not solve the problem of circular reference. As
an example, consider A -> B -> A situation where 'A -> B' means that
A has a a variable that references B.

In the example, A can not be freed because A is reference by B.
B also can not be freed because it is referenced by A. Hence, things
get complicated.

Mark & sweep is an elegant solution to this problem which C++ doesn't
have (but C++ of MS have garbage collection functionality).

Sincerely,
Minkoo Seo


On 5/29/06, Jeff Rose <rosejn@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> C Erler wrote:
> > On 28/05/06, Benjohn Barnes <benjohn@fysh.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> When I first came to Ruby, I'd been using C++'s Boost library, and
> >> the smart pointer in that [1]. I noticed that Ruby didn't have a weak
> >> pointer, and felt I'd find that a problem. I made a lot of use of
> >> weak pointers in manager objects; they'd only manage something for as
> >> long as other people made use of it. I've definitely not needed them
> >> at all though, so maybe it's no big issue :)
> >>
> >
> > For anyone who needs weak references:
> > http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/weakref/rdoc/index.html
> >
>
> Aha.  This isn't what I was looking for, but I think it gets you the
> same functionality without the book keeping of reference counting.
>
> Thanks,
> Jeff
>
>

------=_Part_3519_29819917.1148989148076--