On Fri, 22 Jun 2001 21:03:07 +0200, Enrico Weigelt <weigelt metux de> said: > has anyone thought about integrating an garbage collector > in glib/gtk ? Has anybody thought about the difficulties of implementing a garbage collector for C, when the user is free to do malloc()/free() and alias pointers to each other when the GC code isn't in control? > this would reduce the chance of broken pointers and wasted > memory dramatically. Not really. Remember that memory would *STILL* get wasted even with a garbage collector, if there isn't something imposing rules. If the programmer doesn't call free(), the memory won't get freed with a garbage collector, because there will still be a reference (the pointer that wasn't free()ed). Garbage collectors, in general, really blow major chunks unless you're coding in a Lisp or Java type language where it's *ENFORCED*. But that wouldn't be C/C++. -- Valdis Kletnieks Operating Systems Analyst Virginia Tech
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