[gclist] More questions for the FAQ

[Henry G. Baker]

> John Levine writes:
> 
> > Word files are structured as chunks of stuff with pointers, so getting 
> > rid of the garbage requires in effect a compacting GC.
> 
> And Henry says all the garbage goes away on a "save as", but not on a
> "save".  Yuck!  You're telling me they know how to collect all this
> garbage, but they don't actually do it on a save?!  It seems like that's
> the perfect time to invoke the gc.  Are these people trying to sell
> disks?

No.  'Save' needs to be very fast, since you want to be able to save
your work every paragraph or so in case of a computer crash.  The
right place to do this would be at a Quit/Save, but most programs don't
couple these the way vi does.

-- 
Henry Baker
www/ftp directory:
ftp.netcom.com:/pub/hb/hbaker/home.html