[gclist] ref-counting performance cost

[Daniel Wang]

Bob Kerns <Bob.Kerns@brightware.com> writes:

{stuff deleted}
> I'd like to add one more technique that some programmer (mainly
> myself) once tried to get a very easy to implement form of automatic
> memory management - always use deep-copy semantics when assigning a
> pointer, and always do a recursive free when releasing a pointer.
> Highly inefficient, but it works. Slightly different semantics for
> mutable objects though.

This sound like programming with a linear type discipline... 

  Henry Baker, "'Use-Once' Variables and Linear Objects--Storage Management,
  Reflection and Multi-Threading".  ACM Sigplan Notices, September, 1994. A
  high-level discussion of 'linear' and 'non-linear' (traditional)
  names/variables/objects in programming languages.

There's an online copy some place but I've lost the url...