Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> Care to provide some credible links/evidence for this claim?

Smalltalk-80: The Language and Implementation. Or look into any LISP 
implementation.

As for a newer reference? Not too many around, as people don't use 
reference counting seriously, because it's so flawed. Providing newer 
references would be like providing references for bad cache coherency 
performance of bubble sorts.

 > It is new to
> me, and probably 99% of those using reference counting...

There's a difference between "a reference-counted garbage-collection 
system" and "a program using reference counting."  Certainly, if you 
implement it yourself and you have full control over every way you're 
going to use it and you don't allocate enough objects that the added 
overhead is worth avoiding, then you can use a big counter. People who 
build systems that include GC for others to use generally don't get that 
luxury. Indeed, people that build systems that include GC generally 
don't use reference counting at all, as it (along with mark/sweep) is 
pretty much the most primitive lamest inefficient version of GC 
possible. But sure, if you're limited by what you can implement in C or 
C++ at the application level, it's not too bad, as long as you remember 
to manually break cycles everywhere and you're not trying to make it fast.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Just because you find out you are
     telepathic, don't let it go to your head.

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