quote:
Originally posted by ShawnZ
quote:
Originally posted by Verte
[you know better than some dumb algorithm when you don't need your data anymore]
err... garbage collection disposes of objects when they aren't referenced anywhere anymore, meaning they can't possibly ever be accessed 
That's what they should do. But, if you use pointers anywhere, you've got to be very careful with GC. For example, if you pass a pointer variable to a subroutine, and the subroutine uses a temp variable to represent that variable inside, assigns a new object on the heap to the temp variable, and then the temp variable goes out of scope, most GCs will free the object. In cases such as these, you've got to increment the reference counter by hand, which is to say that you're essentially doing manual garbage collection anyway. This is because Garbage collection typically only tracks direct assignments, and where one variable may reference an object indirectly [such as through an array of pointers or references] the GC will not count the [second-order] reference.
IMO,
you know when you're done with data, you deal with it.
was put impeccably into words at DebianDay for me last Saturday, by Knut Yrvin of Trolltech - adults try something once, fail, and then are like "ffs this doesn't work". Children try, fail, and then try again, and succeed - maybe on the second, or even fifth retry. But the thing is that they keep at it and overcome the problems in the end.
-andrewdodd13
