Re: Storage management, was Compiler writers will love this

> > I really fancy reference-counting is its low overhead,
>
> Sorry to throw a spanner in your works but reference-counting has a
> _higher_ overhead than mark-and-sweep, just ref-counting spreads this
> overhead through out the entire programme where mark-and-sweep bunches
> the overhead together in a large cluster


There are plenty of papers comparing time & memory overhead -- IIRC
the tracing (mark-and-sweep) collectors tend to use a larger heap
because they keep unreachable garbage around for longer, whereas a
counting collector will deallocate objects as soon as they are
unreachable (if it deallocates them at all); its a tradeoff of space
versus time overhead really.


> > How, by the way, does generational collection deal with circular
> > references? Could the algorithm used be adapted for use in reference
> > counting, to form a sort of new hybrid scheme?
>
> I seem to remember reading a paper discussing an algorithm to solve
> the circluar reference problem, I cannot seem to find the paper right
> now (was it Lester92?), citeseer.com should help for anyone interested.


See:
Generational Cyclic Reference Counting
Rafael D. Lins
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/lins92generational.html


Concurrent Cycle Collection in Reference Counted Systems
David F. Bacon, V.T. Rajan
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/383143.html


and you can follow a trail of references from there.

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