A couple garbage collector questions
Douglas Alan
nessus at mit.edu
Tue Apr 3 00:59:11 EDT 2001
I wrote:
> I have a couple of questions regarding the new Python garbage
> collector:
> (1) Why does it use the rather unusual algorithm it does, rather
> than a more typical mark and sweep? The per-object storage cost
> for the extra reference count is surely greater than the bit or
> two required for a typical mark and sweep.
I thought of another potentially good reason for the GC algorithm used
by Python: The Python GC is generational, is it not? With this
algorithm, supporting generational GC seems pretty darn
straight-forward. But with a normal mark & sweep, supporting
generational GC involves keeping track of a "remembered set" of
references from outside the nursery. Perhaps this is very easy to do,
but it seems to me as if it might be a kind of tricky. Does anyone
know?
|>oug
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