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From: sakkinen@jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula3
Subject: Re: GC references (was RE: Two Oberon questions)
Message-ID: <1991Apr25.130634.19780@jyu.fi>
Date: 25 Apr 91 13:06:34 GMT
References: <91Apr23.113622pdt.16245@alpha.xerox.com>
Reply-To: sakkinen@jytko.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
Lines: 20

In article <91Apr23.113622pdt.16245@alpha.xerox.com> Hans_Boehm.PARC@xerox.com writes:
> ...
>Of course, copying collection has its advantages, too.  But there seems to be
>no shortage of papers advertising those.

One very important disadvantage of copying collection is that it
restricts the possible semantics of objects:  no finalisation
(destructors, as in C++) is possible.  This has been explicitly
admitted at least in Edelson's report.

One could very well paraphrase the above restriction:
"Old objects never die, they just fade quietly away."

Markku Sakkinen
Department of Computer Science and Information Systems
University of Jyvaskyla (a's with umlauts)
PL 35
SF-40351 Jyvaskyla (umlauts again)
Finland
          SAKKINEN@FINJYU.bitnet (alternative network address)