[Python-3000] Delayed reference counting idea

[Barry Warsaw]

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On Sep 18, 2006, at 12:27 PM, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:

> "Adam Olsen" <rhamph at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> * Bolt-on tracing GC such as Boehm-Demers-Weiser.  Totally  
>> unsupported
>> by the C standards and changes cache characteristics that CPython has
>> been designed with for years, likely with a very large performance
>> penalty.
>
> Last time I did some GC benchmarks (unrelated to Python), Boehm GC
> came up surprisingly fast. I suppose it's faster than malloc +
> reference counting (not sure how much amortizing malloc calls helps).
>
> I don't like the idea of a conservative GC at all in general, but
> Boehm GC seems to have very good quality, and it's easy to use from
> the point of view of a C API.

What worries me is the unpredictability of gc vs. refcounting.  For  
some class of Python applications it's important that when an object  
is dereferenced it really goes away right then.  I /like/ reference  
counting!

- -Barry

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