[gclist] gclist-digest V1 #40

[Malcolm Cohen]

Darius Blasband wrote:
> Is GC really suited to
> any language and environment ? I really don't think so. What about 
> GC in Fortran ? Cobol ? RPG ?

Fortran 90 and its successors-to-come are prime candidates for GC.  In
particular, the current standard for Fortran (IS 1539-1) has an auxiliary
standard (IS 1539-2) for varying-length string handling, which requires either
  (a) compiler support
  (b) garbage collection
or
  (c) the user not to be worried about memory leakage

since the "example implementation" module leaks memory like a sieve.

[...]
> Somehow, a conservatice GC such Boehm's have only a very tiny relationship
> with the supporting language. It is not closely related to C at all. I
> guess it could be usable almost as is with Fortran... One might say

Indeed, we used it almost as is with Fortran; our Fortran 90 product ships
with a modified form of this collector.

> that it is more system-oriented GC than a language-oriented GC.

Yes - it is still somewhat language-oriented (we made changes to accommodate
Fortran's needs, plus others to improve performance on Fortran programs) but
these were relatively minor.

-- 
...........................Malcolm Cohen, NAG Ltd., Oxford, U.K.
                           (malcolm@nag.co.uk)