Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c++:4249 comp.lang.eiffel:343
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!haven!decuac!shlump.nac.dec.com!ashok.dec.com!nadkarni
From: nadkarni@ashok.dec.com
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.eiffel
Subject: Re: Eiffel vs. C++ -- Let's drop the garbage collection arguments
Message-ID: <3917@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 2 Aug 89 22:18:50 GMT
Sender: news@shlump.nac.dec.com
Followup-To: comp.lang.c++
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 23

In article <45901@oliveb.olivetti.com>, chase@Ozona.orc.olivetti.com (David Chase) writes...
>In article <779@redsox.bsw.com> campbell@redsox.UUCP (Larry Campbell) writes:
>>Modula-3, by contrast, allows you to decide on a type-by-type basis whether
>>objects of the type are to be GC'd or not.  This seems to me to be the best
>>solution.
> 
>To be fair, this is only somewhat the case.  In code that is
>explicitly declared as UNSAFE you are allowed to choose on a
>type-by-type basis whether or not objects are GC'd or not.  In
>
> [stuff deleted]
>David

Not true as far as I recall. If I remember the report correctly, you CAN decide
on a type by type basis whether to GC or not. The UNTRACED keyword is provided
for this purpose. This is true even for SAFE modules. What you might be
referring to is that untraced REFs can point to traced REFs (or is it the other
way around ?) only in UNSAFE modules.

Of course, I've done little more than glance through the language definition
so I might be wrong.

/Ashok