[gclist] User Visible GC

Henry G. Baker hbaker@netcom.com
Tue, 6 May 1997 10:36:13 -0700 (PDT)


> Both of these do something similar to garbage collection, but they do it on
> user visible objects.  What's the best way to program these sorts of features?

So-called 'treeshakers', that throw away functions that aren't called by
other functions, are examples of 'user visible GC', since the user could
conceivably call these functions from top level at any time.

You basically have to do something reasonable and simple, so that the
user can understand intuitively what is going on.  A simple rule is
better than a complex but 'better' rule, since the poor user won't have
a prayer of intuiting the more complex rule.

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