🚀 go-pugleaf

Kazimir Kylheku (c2a192@ugrad.cs.ubc.ca) wrote:
: In article <rbarris-2109951707350001@192.168.1.16>,
: Rob Barris <rbarris@quicksilver.com> wrote:
: >In article <43qddkINNpti@keats.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca>, c2a192@ugrad.cs.ubc.ca
: >(Kazimir Kylheku) wrote:
: >One of the key benefits of handles is the way with which they can be used
: >to represent structures of varying size (that is they can grow and shrink-
: >and none of the many references to such an item in data structures, the
: >stack, local variables become invalid when that happens). And you can ask
: >the system how big one is.

: Right, that's obvious, because your properly written program always takes
: care to dereference through the handle.

: >I can think of a way to do that without actual double indirection, but it
: >chews up an awful lot of address space and requires an MMU. Perhaps you
: >could suggest a better way? You are given a Motorola 68000 motherboard and
: >512K of RAM. Go.

A pointer-safe language with a compacting GC that is MMU smart. 

In any case, I've read postings from experts on GC who say that using
even halfway modern allocators, compaction is a surprisingly small win, as
empirically measured.