[gclist] taking bets on a new collector

[Tom Lord]

    > From: "Pekka P. Pirinen" <pekka.p.pirinen@globalgraphics.com>

    > Tom Lord writes:
    > > I should have added the size restriction to the list of questions.
    > > It certainly means that the implementation of things like Scheme
    > > vectors will be, uh, interesting.

    > How did you end up with a restriction to 256 words in the first place?
    > It should be possible to design around that (slightly slowing down
    > page sweeps, probably).


I'm sure that it is possible to design around that.

The limit simply simplified a lot of things.  I couldn't see any
serious problem with it.  I'll "pay" for it in the implementation of
vectors, but then again, I'll get sub-object greying in exchange for
that.

I also generally like the idea of using tries for large arrays in lisp
dialects -- in exchange for minor complexity in some primitive
operations I get back good (and nearly automatic) support for sparse
arrays and similar tricks.   In a vague way, this seems like the same
sort of benefit one gets from having bignum support.

-t