[gclist] Finalization, collection, etc.

[Robert A Duff]

> GC-triggered finalization suffices in such a context, as leaving the
> scope of such stack-allocable values would cause their immediate
> collection and hence finalization.  (If you nest scopes one variable
> at a time, I don't think that finalizers could become circular without
> losing stack-allocability; if cyclic declarations were permitted, I
> imagine that they could -- though it would be pretty blatant.)
> 
> Would this be sufficient?

I'm not sure I understand it.  How is this different from your basic
run-of-the-mill stack-based language like C, Pascal, Ada, etc.  Well, in
C you can point from the heap to the stack, which is trouble.  But you
can't in Pascal, and you can only do so in Ada by using a feature
specifically marked as "unsafe, system-dependent".

In all of those languages, you can put an object of type T on the stack,
and another one on the heap, and pass them both as parameters and so
forth.

(OK, "Go read la Lucassen's paper" is a fair answer.  ;-) )

- Bob