[gclist] Finalizers & Reference counting.

[Greg Hudson]

On Thu, 2002-08-29 at 11:04, Eliot Moss wrote: 
>     Nick> Then people largely lost interest in copying GC (because the focus of
>     Nick> GC moved to C++, in which moving GC is impossible, and Java, in which
>     Nick> it was very difficult).

> Nick: I'm not sure what you're talking about, concerning Java. Can you
> elucidate? Lots of folks use copying/moving GC with Java just fine,
> including us.

As I understand it, the difficulty stems from wanting to implement
Object.hash() without paying an 4-byte or so penalty for each object. 
I'm not sure if that qualifies as "very difficult," though, just
troublesome.

(I saw some solutions given which involved a one or two-bit penalty for
each object, plus a four-byte penalty for objects which have been hashed
and then moved.)