Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!olivea!decwrl!infopiz!lupine!rfg From: rfg@NCD.COM (Ron Guilmette) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: Smart pointers and stupid people (was: garbage collection...) Message-ID: <3450@lupine.NCD.COM> Date: 23 Jan 91 08:15:01 GMT References: <3344@lupine.NCD.COM> <6059@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> Distribution: comp Organization: Network Computing Devices, Inc., Mt. View, CA Lines: 26 In article <6059@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> chased@rbbb.Eng.Sun.COM (David Chase) writes: +In the absence of any optimizer cooperation (distinct from front-end +cooperation -- the front-end might automatically generate relocation +or mark methods), root pointers MUST be "registered" or otherwise +protected from the optimizer's helping hand. Even so, they cannot be +relocated, because temporaries might also be created that would not be +updated. + ... +There is an easy, portable answer to this problem: "volatile". I get the feeling that David Chase is talking about what I would call "asynchronous" garbage collectors which are invoked every so often (perhaps as a result of a timer signal). That is indeed a problem which needs the help of "volatile", but it is also quite a different problem from the one I was talking about in my previous postings about "the smart pointer problem". -- // Ron Guilmette - C++ Entomologist // Internet: rfg@ncd.com uucp: ...uunet!lupine!rfg // Motto: If it sticks, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.