Re: Raising the abstraction level

[Sirtaj Singh Kang <ssk physics unimelb EDU AU>]

On Sat, 11 Apr 1998, Pieter Schoenmakers wrote:
[snip]
>    The ref counting stuff is in fact intended to raise the abstraction
>    level.  It gives you an abstraction to do proper resource management.
> 
> Reference counting is an ad hoc surrogate for garbage collection.

Well, it is also very effective (but not necessarily pretty) for
implementing copy on write. 

-Taj.

Sirtaj S. Kang       taj@kde.org         ssk@physics.unimelb.edu.au
School of Physics    Univ of Melbourne   The KDE is KNOT a Window Manager.