🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <429@zap.UUCP> fortin@zap.UUCP (Denis Fortin) writes:
>... in a language that encourages information-hiding, a good garbage
>collector is almost a must (in my opinion). ... Without garbage collection,
>you have to have a free/dispose/unchecked_deallocation routine available for
>all hermetic data types you export, ... [otherwise you limit subsequent
>implementations] ... but then it becomes a real pain to write code that uses
>the data type.

C++ provides the notion of a *destructor*.  Whenever you define a class
(abstract data type), you may define a destructor.  The destructor is
*implicitly* called when the variable is deleted (e.g. at the end of the
procedure for local variables).  The implementation of the class may change
from static allocation to dynamic allocation, without changing the client
code, without leaking memory, and without explicit client control of
deallocation.

Garbage collection is one approach to reducing the storage management burden
on programmers.  It is not the only approach, nor is it always the best
approach.
-- 
  Lawrence Crowl		716-275-9499	University of Rochester
		      crowl@cs.rochester.edu	Computer Science Department
...!{allegra,decvax,rutgers}!rochester!crowl	Rochester, New York,  14627