From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2001-11-29T04:27:58+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:26828] Re: Ref Counting (was KDE or GNOME curiosity question...)

On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Matt Armstrong wrote:

> I'm not sure how optional ref counting can be accomplished without
> overhead everywhere.  If object A needed ref counting and object B
> didn't, ruby would somehow need to increment the reference count of A
> and not of B when a new object gains a reference to A and B.  That
> implies some run time check or indirection for both objects, true?

There are two alternatives that I see:

  1) Reference counting could be explicit (that is, you would have to call
     add_ref/remove_ref yourself).  This would be a pure Ruby solution
     (that is, it could be implemented 100% in Ruby).
  2) The parser could know whether a given reference is a normal
     refererence or whether it has to increase the reference count of the
     object to which it is pointing; then the decision is made at
     parse-time, rather than runtime, whether to increment/decrement the
     reference count.

Paul