NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/lang/c++-part2/17751

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 1.6 KB

Path: info.ucla.edu!psgrain!solace!user
From: [e-mail] (Lars Farm)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Why don't you use garbage collection
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 13:11:29 +0200
Organization: pv
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <1996Apr16.110526.1846@ittpub>
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In article <1996Apr16.110526.1846@ittpub>,
[e-mail] (Wil Evers) wrote:

>OK, let's get serious about this:
>
>1. Don't we think C++ is complex enough as it is?

See the Detlefs/Ellis GC proposal. Seems a fairly small change in the
language compared to what is done with templates and exceptions and rtti,
and... A couple of keywords: gc/nogc to be used optionally with class
declarations and optionally with operator new to select collected or non
collected heap. Later gc/nogc overrides previous. There is a way to
finalize, but the need for this is made much smaler. What is inside most
copy/op=/dtors? Code to copy heap data and release data held by pointers.
What would copy/op=/dtors look like when pointers can be shared and you
don't have to say delete? Many of them would become redundant! The
(current) compiler generated op= and copy would very often suffice. The
minority of objects with non empty dtors would be deleted manually just
like now. This makes things simpler, not harder. Anyway, this wont happen.
GC seems not to appeal to the committee members. If it did GC would shurely
be in the language by now.