[gclist] weak pointer and gc

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

Ken Anderson <kanderson@bbn.com> wrote:
	The CL implementations i've used, LispM, Lucid, Allegro, CMU
	keep symbols forever.

Common Lisp *has* to keep symbols with non-default values for properties
around forever.  Suppose a Common Lisp program does

    (setf (symbol-value (intern "Great Zot!")) 42)

and then for the next 40 days and nights there are *no* references to the
symbol |Great Zot!| anywhere at all in the program.  Lisp must be ready
nonetheless to produce the right value for

    (symbol-value (intern "Great Zot!"))

*even though* the symbol was not referenced.

If a symbol has no value        (makunbound '|Great Zot!|)
and no function binding        (fmakunbound '|Great Zot!|)
and no property list    (setf (symbol-plist '|Great Zot!|) nil)
-- or rather, whatever default property list the Lisp uses --
then it may be removed by the garbage collector.

Scheme does not have symbol-value, symbol-function, or symbol-plist,
which gives a Scheme implementor greater freedom.

	As far as your XML question goes, i've found that a leaky hash
	table for immutable strings works very well.  Such a table will
	contain the most popular strings at any given time, but the
	table can be quite small.

One example of a leaky table would be one that was made completely empty
by the garbage collector.

It all depends on whether uniqueness is simply a space-saving hack or
whether identity (in Scheme terms, the option of using EQ? rather than
EQUAL?) is an essential property.