From: Dan Sugalski <dan@...>
Date: 2002-07-04T04:00:44+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby implementation Q's

At 3:54 AM +0900 7/4/02, Justin Johnson wrote:
>  > Well, how do other languages implement GC?  Which language, in your
>opinion,
>>  has the *best* form of garbage collection?  I only know a little bit about
>>  GC, and then only with regards to Perl and Ruby.  I have no idea how C,
>C++,
>>  Java, Smalltalk, OCaml, Lisp, etc handle GC behind the scenes.
>
>Perl and Python use reference counting in combination with a mark-and-sweep
>to reclaim cyclic reference garbage.  C and C++ have only manual
>allocation/destruction by default but libraries are available to provide
>various flavours of garbage collection.

This isn't true for perl. Perl uses a pure refcount scheme, with a 
walk of the arenas at the end of a program for forced destruction. No 
mark and sweep. (Python's got a more complex scheme which is 
generating some interesting discussion on the python-dev list at the 
moment, but I'm unfamiliar enough with it to say anything definitive)
-- 
                                         Dan

--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
dan@sidhe.org                         have teddy bears and even
                                       teddy bears get drunk