develooper Front page | perl.perl6.language | Postings from February 2001

Re: Garbage collection (was Re: JWZ on s/Java/Perl/)

Thread Previous | Thread Next
From:
Piers Cawley
Date:
February 12, 2001 13:06
Subject:
Re: Garbage collection (was Re: JWZ on s/Java/Perl/)
Message ID:
m3ae7rip8i.fsf@iest.bofh.org.uk
Dan Sugalski <dan@sidhe.org> writes:

> At 10:38 AM 2/12/2001 -0500, Sam Tregar wrote:
> >On Mon, 12 Feb 2001, Dan Sugalski wrote:
> >
> > > Perl needs some level of tracking for objects with finalization attached to
> > > them. Full refcounting isn't required, however.
> >
> >I think I've heard you state that before.  Can you be more specific?  What
> >alternate system do you have in mind?  Is this just wishful thinking?
> 
> This isn't just wishful thinking, no.
> 
> > > Also, the vast majority of perl variables have no finalization
> > > attached to them.
> >
> >That's true, but without static typing don't you have to treat them as if
> >they did?  At the very least you need to do a "is it an object with a
> >DESTROY" check at block boundaries.
> 
> Code flow analysis can get an awful lot. Some help from the runtime
> will get the rest.
> 
> 
> It's reasonably obvious (which is to say "cheap") which variables
> aren't involved with anything finalizable.

Remember too that right now we don't properly finalize everything as
quickly as we should in the cases where stuff is caught up in circular
references. We don't need to be perfect, but we do need to be
predictable.

-- 
Piers


Thread Previous | Thread Next


nntp.perl.org: Perl Programming lists via nntp and http.
Comments to Ask Bjørn Hansen at ask@perl.org | Group listing | About