Path: csiph.com!news.swapon.de!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Paul Rubin Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth,comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Implementing lisp in Forth. Chapter 4. Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2016 12:34:26 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 10 Message-ID: <87wpimkwxp.fsf@jester.gateway.pace.com> References: <2016Sep6.215003@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="590ea01354cf4bcbcd857d7ebbd88128"; logging-data="24703"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18q9gkibP5qvNwlJA8TtnBF" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:M5swsTatupJn3oR+jF614FKGzI4= sha1:6B1/9uIyYUKy36bjwdZ759yBXRY= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.forth:50757 comp.lang.lisp:27945 albert@cherry.spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) writes: > In the context of conservative garbage collectors, I expect that sometimes > cyclic structures are not collected. There shouldn't be anything different about them from non-cyclic structures as regards the gc finding them. Anton's point was that a conservative gc doesn't scan all of memory; but rather, it recursively traces outward from a predefined root set, like any other gc. If there's a cyclic structure out there that's unreachable from the roots, it will get collected.