Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!cernvax!chx400!chx400!bernina!neptune!mint!marti From: marti@mint.inf.ethz.ch (Robert Marti) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: reference counting vs. scanning GC (was: Implementing LISP in C++) Message-ID: <28301@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> Date: 25 Apr 91 16:30:34 GMT References: Sender: news@neptune.inf.ethz.ch Reply-To: marti@mint.inf.ethz.ch (Robert Marti) Organization: Departement Informatik, ETH, Zurich Lines: 34 In article tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: > In article <1991Apr23.000632.9175@neon.Stanford.EDU> > hoelzle@neon.Stanford.EDU > (Urs Hoelzle) writes in response to an earlier message by tmb@ai.mit.edu > (Thomas M. Breuel): > >>[Any kind of garbage collection other than reference counting] will have > >>much higher overhead [in the case of non-recursive data structures]. >This is quoted incorrectly, and it does not represent what I was saying. First off, I (and not Urs Hoelzle) was the one who was paraphrasing what I preceived Thomas Breuel as saying. Sorry if I mistunderstood and therefore misquoted your views, Thomas. [Lengthy explanations deleted.] >For C++, the implication of this is that, while it may make sense >to use scanning garbage collectors for most of the garbage, reference >counting is a sensible technique for large floating point and integer >vectors, which is all I was claiming to begin with. What exactly means "sensible"? All _I_ was saying is that in my C++ application, I had "large" bit vectors and large inter vectors and found that running times using a mark-and-sweep collector were about 60% as opposed to doing reference counting and deallocation myself. I am a little unsure if this means that ref counting is sensible in this very situation ... Robert Marti | Phone: +41 1 254 72 60 Institut fur Informationssysteme | FAX: +41 1 262 39 73 ETH-Zentrum | E-Mail: marti@inf.ethz.ch CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland |