From: Alan Chen <alan@...>
Date: 2001-11-29T04:59:00+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:26831] Re: Ref Counting (was KDE or GNOME curiosity question...)



On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 04:27:58AM +0900, Paul Brannan wrote:
> 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
> 
How about

3) provide a hooks into the current object and GC system such that a ruby mixin can be written that implements reference counting.

-- 
Alan Chen
Digikata LLC
alan@digikata.com
http://digikata.com