Re: possible garbage collector problem...

[<eric@son-of-blob>]

>From tribble Sat Sep 30 17:58:37 1989
	From: tribble (Eric Dean Tribble)
	To: us
	Subject: possible garbage collector problem...
	
	...from Peter Deutsch.  He called me this morning with a problem that he woke
	up with - it seems our plan worked ;-)
	
	what happens when the compiler automatically generates a temporary
	pointer variable.  f(g(x)) might turn into 
	
	TYPE foo = g(x);
	f(foo);
	
	If a garbage collection happened between the two statements, and foo
	is not a StrongPointer, then the thing that foo points to might vanish
	before or during the call to f().  My gut reaction is that this isn't
	a problem, but I don't know enough to figure out why not.
	
	We should consider paying Peter (c/o Alladin Enterprises) to actually
	consult on GC when he returns.  He's interested enough in the problem,
	I think, and it'd be nice to ease him in :-)  Also the last number I
	heard from him was cheep:  $100/hr in low quantities, less for more
	(assuming he had the time).  I suspect his trade for this is that he's
	picky. 
	
	dean
	

Garbage collecting between pieces of a single expression isn't a problem
as long as we are single threaded.  We'll clearly have to be cleverer about
it when we go to multiple threads.  I don't have an obvious solution in mind
right now though.
	- e -